Dr. Simon David Hirsbrunner is a media scholar analyzing online debates about climate change and other sustainability issues, where he focuses on

• the role of online platforms in the reconfiguration of trust in scientific expertise
• discursive positionings towards sustainability issues in online media.

Some of his findings of this research are gathered in the article Negotiating the Data Deluge on YouTube: Practices of Knowledge Appropriation and Articulated Ambiguity Around Visual Scenarios of Sea-Level Rise Futures published in Frontiers in Communication.

Simon Hirsbrunner is particularly interested in methodological questions and innovations regarding the analysis of online communication. In his collaboration with HCC colleagues, he experiments with combinations of Machine Learning (Language Models, Clustering algorithms) and qualitative methods (Grounded Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis) to analyze online media and debates. The collaboration led to the MA seminar Critical social media analysis using mixed methods, where students analyze online controversies around climate skepticism, toxic discursive practices and conspiracy narratives.

His research is funded by Geo.X, the association of research institutions for the geosciences in Berlin and Brandenburg.

Active engagements and memberships:

• Board Member, stsing - Science and Technology Studies in and through Germany
• Co-Speaker, Open Media Studies working group of the German Association for Media Studies (GfM)
• Member of the international artistic-research network New Nature convened by Goethe Institute.
• External reviewer for DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst)
• Member of EASST (European Association for the Study of Science and Technology
• Member of GWTF (deutsche Gesellschaft für Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung)

Academic training and degrees:

• PhD in Media Ethnography, University of Siegen
• MA in European Media Studies, University of Potsdam
• MA in International Relations, Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies, Geneva

Winter Term 2020/21

• Seminar: Critical social media analysis using mixed methods (Seminar)