Laurenz Derksen
PhD Candidate, ETH Zürich
I study the political implications of human interactions with increasingly algorithmic online platforms. I also work on content moderation practices, evaluating their effects on toxic users, bystanders, and the targets. Most of my work runs as large field experiments, with rich data collection through platform APIs and surveys.
Work in progress
- Algorithmic discovery and democratic engagement: Evidence from Instagram’s political content recommendations
- Moderators’ missing audience: A field experiment on informing the targets of online hostility
- Spillover effects of suspending toxic users on social media expression
Publications
- Counterspeech encouraging users to adopt the perspective of minority groups reduces hate speech and its amplification on social media
- The distribution of hate speech and its implications for content moderation
- The demand side of democratic backsliding: How divergent understandings of democracy shape political choice
- Empathy-based counterspeech can reduce racist hate speech in a social media field experiment