Dr Fabienne Lind

Hannah Arendt Fellowship 2026 “Democracy”

Junior Fellowship | Computational Social Science, Digital Publics, Comparative Crisis Communication

Fabienne Lind is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna. Her work examines the contents, structures and dynamics of digital public spheres, with a special focus on global and transnational discourse. Combining traditional empirical methods with computational approaches, Fabienne studies political, international, and environmental communication. More specifically, her work addresses how digital communication shapes public understanding and the negotiation of social-ecological transformation and gender equality. Projects are focused on the social media communications of parties and media on controversial climate policies, on far-right ideologies on TikTok, and on the impact of media information on knowledge gaps. Informing the empirical studies, Fabienne’s work is further focused on methodological innovation in the area of digital methods, specifically computational multilingual text analysis and measurement validity. Her work critically examines issues of accessibility, quality, and fairness—including linguistic and sociopolitical biases in large language models, as well as robust validation strategies for comparative platform research.

Dr Fabienne Lind, Hannah Arendt Fellow 2026

/ Visualising Democracy’s Fault Lines: AfD’s Gendered TikTok Campaigns and Young Voters

At the heart of the Hannah Arendt Fellowship project “Visualising Democracy’s Fault Lines: AfD’s Gendered TikTok Campaigns and Young Voters” is the question of how right‑wing populist actors use digital platforms to reach young voters and what role conflict narratives around family and gender play in this. Against the backdrop of growing support for the AfD among young people and ongoing proceedings concerning its classification as a confirmed right‑wing extremist organization, the project examines how democratic contestation is strategically shifted and intensified on TikTok.

The study analyzes AfD‑related TikTok communication from 2021 to 2026 and combines computational audiovisual methods with approaches from gender and democracy studies. It focuses on discursive strategies that stage issues of the “traditional family,” the gender order, and cultural identity as central fault lines. The project’s core aim is to make visible how such narratives are tailored to young audiences and what resonance they generate. In doing so, the project contributes to research on digital mobilization strategies and to understanding the challenges of democratic resilience in the platform age.

/ Project Activities

Host

Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media (HMTMH), logo

Partner

Jun.-Prof. Dr Christine E. Meltzer

Christine E. Meltzer is an assistant professor at Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media. Her research focuses on the role of media and music in intergroup conflicts and social inequality, with particular focus on media and migration, and violence against women. Her work critically examines questions of representation and visibility, including intersectional patterns of inclusion and exclusion in media content, as well as the consequences of skewed media images for public attitudes and political behavior.