I am currently working on a new research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation that aims to improve the quality of public discourse (Improving Public Discourse). This is joint work with colleagues at the Digital Democracy Lab, at ETH Zurich and at UCL and a continuation of prior work we did to support the work of the Public Discourse Foundation to counter online hate speech (StopHateSpeech).
Together with colleagues in communication, computer and political science, I also have a project on measuring the impact of the digital transformation on preferences, attitudes and behaviors (DigiVox). Supported by a DIZH infrastructure grant, we have established a new Swiss national survey panel on questions related to digitalization.
And working with a colleague in the School of Social Work at ZHAW, I have recently received DIZH project funding for a project that aims to increase social welfare benefit uptake by using an AI tool to simplify complex documents, validating its effectiveness and assessing its real-world impact through field experiments (Simplify!). For detailed project descriptions, please follow the links below:
- Improving the Quality of Online Public Discourse (Improving Public Discourse)
- Swiss national survey panel on digitalization (DigiVox)
- Improving Social Services through a Generative Translation Tool for Plain/Simple Language (Simplify!)
Further research projects that I have contributed to in the past have been funded by the Swiss Innovation Agency (Innosuisse), the Swiss Federal Office of Communications (BAKOM), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID), the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, the academy of sciences of the state of Baden-Württemberg, and a Minerva research grant. Please refer to Past Projects for details.