Collective phenomena of the digital space - Criminological dimensions and challenges to criminal law

• Applicant: Dr. Amina Hoppe
• Subject Area: Criminology ; Criminal Law
• Term: from 2020 to 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446948974

The progress of digitalisation enables new forms of communication. A considerable number of people take part in public discussions and use the social digital space to make emotional, critical statements, including attacks against third parties. The project takes a closer look at these phenomena by exploring the network Twitter.So far, research in criminal law regarding the above-mentioned matter has been limited to the criminal liability of individuals according to the current legal situation. Criminological research, especially in the German-speaking area, is largely absent. Considering the specific effects, which result from simultaneous action of a considerable number of people, and regarding social science findings, which in these cases assume collectives with central actors and strong group-dynamic effects, further criminological and criminal research is required.The project aims to explore the harming potential of these phenomena and, on this basis, to review the German criminal law. The study is based on an empirical survey. For this purpose, a programmed software automatically collects appropriate data by evaluating the emerging topics, defined by the used hashtag, in the German-speaking Twitter network over a period of six months. In this way, it recognizes rising topics at an early stage and records the participation and the structure of all accounts involved. This happens while the phaenomenon is taking place, so the record contains all tweets, including those that have been deleted later and that may contain more critical or criminally relevant content.Within the project, the collected data will be complemented and evaluated. Based on statistical values and text analysis, basic structures of the collective phenomena as well as their content and language courses are shown, whereby the impaired legal interests become visible. In addition, the structure of the actors involved, and the intensity of participation are examined by a social network analysis. These findings are used to review the criminal system of imputability and to investigate the criminal liability of key actors. In addition, specific behaviours, such as the use of automated accounts, so-called bots, and the multiple involvement in such phenomena as well as the punishability of this behaviour are analysed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants