Andreas Jungherr's photostream  

Hy there,

I am a student of political science at the University of Mainz, Germany.

A lot of my recent work has focused on the applications of microblogging for politicians and political activists. I like to think of microblogs and Twitter as a large interconnected sensor network. In cooperation with Pascal Jürgens I am preparing a series of quantitative studies, that will explore how this sensor network might affect the political discourse and collective action.

The great folks at DigiActive gave me the chance to put some of my thinking regarding the practical aspects of political Twittering in writing:

The DigiActive Guide to Twitter for Activism
www.digiactive.org/2009/04/13/twitter_guide/

While working on the various aspects of microblogging and fooling around with agent based modeling, I grew to believe that the social sciences are headed towards their next paradigm shift. The turn towards computational social sciences will be just as disruptive as the quantitative turn of the 20th century. In this growing field I am most interested in the structure of social networks and the flow of information through them. Right now I am preparing two studies on this topic. So stay tuned for more. Until then, you can have a look at a paper I wrote together with Pascal Jürgens and Benjamin Heitman. There we discuss some methodological problems associated with the study of human data traces on the web.

The Interplay of Theory and Observation: A Proposition for Structured Research on Human Behavior on the Web
journal.webscience.org/188/

A more traditional field of interest for a political scientist is the study of political leadership and the recruitment dynamics of political organizations. On these topics I wrote my Magister Thesis. Since the thesis is still evaluated I have to refrain from posting it here. Instead you can have a look at a preliminary paper that contains some of my thinking on the topic. I presented this paper at the 2009 MPSA conference in Chicago, Illinois. Later this year I will present further work on these topics at the 2009 ECPR conference in Potsdam, Germany.

Leadership in Politics? A qualitative examination of young politicians in Hessen
www.allacademic.com/meta/p364199_index.html

Since this is the draft to an unpublished paper, it is rather on the rough side. So proceed with caution.

To keep in touch with the messy realm of real-world-politics, I regularly work for political campaigns in Germany. I have worked on various campaigns on different levels of German politics. I worked directly for candidates in local and regional races, as well as political campaigns on the German Länder-level. During these campaigns I worked as organizer, online campaigner, strategist, speech writer and volunteer handing out leaflets.

If we have met in person, I probably have told you more about these topics than you cared to hear. I also might have mentioned the magical truth in the films of Jean Renoir, the eternal divide between Truffaut and Godard (no doubt siding with Truffaut and exhibiting no understanding whatsoever if you expressed sympathy for Godard), and finally the fantastic worlds of Guillermo del Toro. Other evergreens of mine evolve around the plays by Shakespeare, the life of Goethe, the con artists of David Mamet, and the works of Neal Stephenson. You better do not mention the "Baroque Cycle" and "Anathem" or you'll never hear the end of it. As a true immigrant to the 21st century, I also enjoy the occasional game of Go.

All the best from Mainz, Germany,
Andreas Jungherr