Understanding the Societal and Scientific Challenge of Digital News Audience Fragmentation

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw; Dr. Frank Mangold, since 8/2025
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 552234710

Digitalization has created both the need for a deeper substantive understanding of and unprecedented methodological challenges in studying news audience fragmentation as one of the most central and societally impactful topics of communication research in the digital age. Therefore, the proposed project engages in methodological innovation to provide the most robust and comprehensive account of news audience fragmentation so far by mapping its prevalence, patterns as well as individual and societal drivers and effects with greater breadth and depth than ever before. Considering the most widely acknowledged obstacles to a better theoretical and empirically grounded understanding of news audience fragmentation, we specifically address the core issues of whether and how audiences are fragmented in their exposure to news contents (rather than sources) and, in particular, political news content; how online intermediaries (like social media, search engines and news portals) impact audience fragmentation; and how news audience fragmentation dynamically evolves with and shapes individualization, segregation and political polarization tendencies in modern democratic societies. To achieve these conceptual breakthroughs, the project draws on an unprecedented combination of secondary analyses of two unique existing cross-national data sets with a groundbreaking primary data collection for Germany. We expand on the latest advances in collecting and linking web-tracking data (on news exposure) with panel surveys (on users’ interests, viewpoints, etc.) and content analysis; and join them with progresses in original network science (e.g., two-mode networks) and computer science (e.g., few-shot learning using pretrained language models) untapped in media and communication research so far. In parallel, we transform communication research depending on digital behavioral data (like web tracking) into a more sustainable effort, incl. research transparency and adherence to open-science principles, compliance with the legal and ethical state-of-the-art, and our capability to publicly share and enable reuse of our data by other scholars. Considering that a valid understanding of audience fragmentation is an extremely multidimensional endeavor, the interdisciplinary project group joins a broad array of complementary substantive and methodological competencies. To overcome previous isolated accounts in favor of an integrated theoretical and empirical picture, the project is embedded in a network of national and international cooperation partners, comprising both leading experts from media and communication research and from original network science.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Denmark, Switzerland, United Kingdom, USA
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Christian Biemann; Chung-hong Chan, Ph.D.
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Kim Andersen, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Martin Everett; Dr. Richard Fletcher; Professor Dr. Thomas Friemel; Professorin Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon; Professor Zachary Neal, Ph.D.; Professor Harsh Taneja; Professorin Kjerstin Thorson, Ph.D.
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr. David Schoch, until 7/2025