How Are You, Democracy? - Einladung und Call for Posters Academic Conference on Measuring Sentiment and Polarization in Times of Crises

As part of the Triangel Days of Democracy, the SOSEC consortium hosts How Are You, Democracy? – Academic Conference on Measuring Sentiment and Polarization in Times of Crises on June 25, 2026 at Kronenplatz, Karlsruhe.

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology invite researchers to submit poster contributions by June 1, 2026. The conference brings together empirical research on how social sentiment, polarization, and trust in institutions co-evolve during political and societal crises. We welcome contributions from political science, sociology, communication research, computational social science, psychology, and adjacent fields. Accepted posters will be published in a curated online collection after the conference. Participation is free of charge.

Topics include, but are not limited to:
• Social sentiment and political attitudes during crises
• Polarization, fragmentation, and cohesion in democratic societies
• Trust in institutions, media, and political actors
• Early warning signals, critical events, and tipping points in democratic systems
• Computational approaches: panel data, social media analysis, NLP, agent-based modeling
• Comparative perspectives on democratic resilience
• Methodological innovations in measuring social sentiment
• Digital participation, deliberation, and platform effects on democratic discourse

Special Guest: Prof. Dr. Oliver Nachtwey (University of Basel)

The poster session is designed for exchange across empirical, theoretical, and applied perspectives, and between academia, civil society, and the wider public. The conference language is English. Abstracts should not exceed 1,500 words. Submissions from early-career researchers are particularly welcome. Submit your abstract to: fegert@fzi.de