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Vita

I am a Senior Researcher at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Cologne. Currently, I serve as Interim Scientific Director of the Department Computational Social Science. My research is situated in the fields of computational social science, digital media, political communication and comparative politics.

Recent work has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and the European Journal of Political Research. I am leading collaborative projects funded by the German Research Foundation DFG, the Leibniz Association and the Volkswagen Foundation. I am also a member of the editorial board of Political Communication.
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Publications

Publication

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Journal article

Maier, Jürgen, Corinna Oschatz, Sebastian Stier, and Ingo Zettler. 2022. "A short scale to measure self-reported aversive personality in political elites." Journal of Personality Assessment online first. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2022.2130341.

Maier, Jürgen, Sebastian Stier, and Corinna Oschatz. 2022. "Are candidates rational when it comes to negative campaigning?: Empirical evidence from three German candidate surveys." Party Politics online first. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/13540688221085239.

Schoch, David, Franziska B Keller, Sebastian Stier, and JungHwan Yang. 2022. "Coordination patterns reveal online political astroturfing across the world." Scientific Reports 2022 (12): 4572. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-08404-9.

Saeltzer, Marius, and Sebastian Stier. 2022. "Die Bundestagswahl 2021 auf Twitter." Easy social sciences (67): 30-38. doi: https://doi.org/10.15464/easy.2022.05.

Trilling, Damian, Juhi Kulshrestha, Claes de Vreese, Denis Halagiera, Jakub Jakubowski, Judith Möller, Cornelius Puschmann, Agnieszka Stępińska, Sebastian Stier, and Cristian Vaccari. 2022. "Is sharing just a function of viewing?: The sharing of political and non-political news on Facebook." Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media 2. doi: https://doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2022.016.

Yan, Pu, Ralph Schroeder, and Sebastian Stier. 2022. "Is there a link between climate change scepticism and populism?: An analysis of web tracking and survey data from Europe and the US." Information, Communication & Society 25 (10): 1400-1439 . doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1864005.

Kirkizh, Nora, Caterina Froio, and Sebastian Stier. 2022. "Issue trade-offs and the politics of representation: Experimental evidence from four European democracies." European Journal of Political Research online first. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12558.

Richter, Simon, and Sebastian Stier. 2022. "Learning about the unknown Spitzenkandidaten: The role of media exposure during the 2019 European Parliament elections." European Union Politics 23 (2): 309–329. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/14651165211051171.

Silber, Henning, Johannes Breuer, Christoph Beuthner, Tobias Gummer, Florian Keusch, Pascal Siegers, Sebastian Stier, and Bernd Weiß. 2022. "Linking surveys and digital trace data: Insights from two studies on determinants of data sharing behavior." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) 185 (S2): S387-S407. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12954.

Stier, Sebastian, Frank Mangold, Michael Scharkow, and Johannes Breuer. 2022. "Post post-broadcast democracy?: News exposure in the age of online intermediaries." American Political Science Review 116 (2): 768-774. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421001222.

Oschatz, Corinna, Sebastian Stier, and Jürgen Maier. 2022. "Twitter in the News: An analysis of embedded tweets in political news coverage." Digital Journalism 10 (9): 1526-1545. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1912624.

Breuer, Johannes, Zoltán Kmetty, Mario Haim, and Sebastian Stier. 2022. "User-centric approaches for collecting Facebook data in the ‘post-API age’: experiences from two studies and recommendations for future research." Information, Communication & Society online first. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2022.2097015.

Schürmann, Lennart, and Sebastian Stier. 2022. "Who represents the constituency?: Online political communication by members of parliament in the German mixed-member electoral system." Legislative Studies Quarterly online first. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12379.

Haim, Mario, Johannes Breuer, and Sebastian Stier. 2021. "Do news actually "find me"?: Using digital behavioral data to study the news-finds-me phenomenon." Social Media and Society 7 (3). doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211033820.

Stier, Sebastian, Caterina Froio, and Wolf J. Schünemann. 2021. "Going transnational?: Candidates’ transnational linkages on Twitter during the 2019 European Parliament elections." West European Politics 44 (7): 1455-1481. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2020.1812267.

Mangold, Frank, Sebastian Stier, Johannes Breuer, and Michael Scharkow. 2021. "The overstated generational gap in online news use?: A consolidated infrastructural perspective." New Media & Society online first. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444821989972.

Maier, Michaela, Carlos Jalali, Jürgen Maier, Alessandro Nai, and Sebastian Stier. 2021. "When do parties put Europe in the centre?: Evidence from the 2019 European Parliament election campaign." Politics 41 (4): 433-450. https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211008348.

Scharkow, Michael, Frank Mangold, Sebastian Stier, and Johannes Breuer. 2020. "How social network sites and other online intermediaries increase exposure to news." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (6): 2761-2763. doi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1918279117.

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, Pascal Siegers, and Kjerstin Thorson. 2020. "Integrating survey data and digital trace data: Key issues in developing an emerging field." Social Science Computer Review 38 (5): 503-516. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439319843669.

Keller, Franziska, David Schoch, Sebastian Stier, and JungHwan Yang. 2020. "Political astroturfing on Twitter: How to coordinate a disinformation campaign." Political Communication 37 (2): 256-280. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1661888.

Stier, Sebastian, Nora Kirkizh, Caterina Froio, and Ralph Schroeder. 2020. "Populist attitudes and selective exposure to online news – A cross-country analysis combining web tracking and surveys." doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220907018.

Rau, Jan Philipp, and Sebastian Stier. 2019. "Die Echokammer-Hypothese: Fragmentierung der Öffentlichkeit und politische Polarisierung durch digitale Medien?" Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 13 (3): 399–417. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-019-00429-1.

Jungherr, Andreas, Ralph Schroeder, and Sebastian Stier. 2019. "Digital media and the surge of political outsiders: Explaining the success of political challengers in the United States, Germany, and China." Social Media + Society 5 (3). doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119875439.

Stier, Sebastian, Arnim Bleier, Haiko Lietz, and Markus Strohmaier. 2018. "Election Campaigning on Social Media: Politicians, Audiences and the Mediation of Political Communication on Facebook and Twitter." Political Communication 35 (1): 50-74. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1334728.

Stier, Sebastian, Wolf J. Schünemann, and Stefan Steiger. 2018. "Of activists and gatekeepers: Temporal and structural properties of policy networks on Twitter." New Media & Society 20 (5): 1910-1930. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817709282.

Stier, Sebastian. 2017. "Internet diffusion and regime type: Temporal patterns in technology adoption." Telecommunications Policy 41 (1): 25–34. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2016.10.005.

Stier, Sebastian, Lisa Posch, Arnim Bleier, and Markus Strohmaier. 2017. "When populists become popular: comparing Facebook use by the right-wing movement Pegida and German political parties." Information, Communication & Society 20 (9): 1365-1388. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1328519.

Schünemann, Wolf J., Stefan Steiger, and Sebastian Stier. 2016. "Transnationalisierung politischer Öffentlichkeit über Soziale Medien – ein Politikfeldvergleich." Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 10 (Suppl. 2): 233-257. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-016-0300-2.

Stier, Sebastian. 2015. "Democracy, Autocracy, and the News: The Impact of Regime Type on Media Freedom." Democratization 22 (7): 1273-1295. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2014.964643.

Stier, Sebastian. 2015. "Political Determinants of E-Government Performance Revisited: Comparing Democracies and Autocracies." Government Information Quarterly 32 (3): 270–278. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2015.05.004.

Schünemann, Wolf J., Stefan Steiger, and Sebastian Stier. 2015. "The Net Neutrality Debate on Twitter." Internet Policy Review 4 (4). doi: https://doi.org/10.14763/2015.4.394.

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Contribution to edited volume

Stier, Sebastian, Jürgen Maier, and Corinna Oschatz. 2021. "Die Nutzung sozialer Medien durch Kandidaten im Bundestagswahlkampf 2017." In Wahlen und Wähler: Analysen aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 2017, edited by Bernhard Weßels, and Harald Schoen, 415-432. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-33582-3_20.

Stier, Sebastian, and Andreas Jungherr. 2019. "Digitale Verhaltensdaten und Methoden der Computational Social Science in der politischen Kommunikationsforschung." In Politik in der digitalen Gesellschaft, edited by Jeanette Hofmann, Norbert Kersting, Claudia Ritzi, and Wolf J. Schünemann, 309-326. Bielefeld: transcript. https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4864-5/politik-in-der-digitalen-gesellschaft/.

Stier, Sebastian. 2019. "Internetfreiheit in Europa." 2. In E-Government und Netzpolitik im europäischen Vergleich, edited by Wolf J. Schünemann, and Marianne Kneuer, 301-320. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

Becker, Maria, Marcus Müller, Wolf J. Schünemann, Stefan Steiger, Jörn Stegmeier, and Sebastian Stier. 2019. "Multi-Method Discourse Analysis of Twitter Communication." In Quantifying Approaches to Discourse for Social Scientists, edited by Ronny Scholz, 285-314. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97370-8_10.

Franziska B., Keller, Schoch David, Sebastian Stier, and JungHwan Yang. 2017. "How to Manipulate Social Media: Analyzing Political Astroturfing Using Ground Truth Data from South Korea." In Proceedings of the Eleventh International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 564-567. https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM17/paper/view/15638.

Stier, Sebastian. 2017. "Political Determinants of Media Freedom." In Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights, edited by Howard Tumber, and Silvio Waisbord, 149-157. London: Routledge.

Stier, Sebastian. 2016. "Partisan Framing of Political Debates on Twitter." In Websci' 16: Proceedings of the 8th International ACM Web Science Conference, 365-366. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2908131.2908193.

Stier, Sebastian. 2016. "Studying the Role of Elites in U.S. Political Twitter Debates." In Proceedings of the 6th Microposts Workshop @WWW 2016, 43-45.

Stier, Sebastian. 2015. "Strukturbedingungen im Online-Wahlkampf: USA und Deutschland im Vergleich." In Die US-Präsidentschaftswahl 2012, Analysen der Politik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, edited by Christoph Bieber, and Kamps Klaus, 363–382. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

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Editorship

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, Pascal Siegers, and Kjerstin Thorson, ed. 2020. Integrating survey data and digital trace data: Special issue in social science computer review. Thousand Oaks: Sage. https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ssce/38/5.

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Monograph

Stier, Sebastian. 2017. Internet und Regimetyp: Netzpolitik und politische Online-Kommunikation in Autokratien und Demokratien. Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 2. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-17207-7.

Stier, Sebastian. 2012. Die Bedeutung des Internets als Medium der politischen Kommunikation in Deutschland und den USA – eine vergleichende Fallstudie. Studien zur politischen Kommunikation 6. Münster: Lit-Verlag. http://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/3-643-11831-8.

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Working and discussion paper

Stier, Sebastian, Arnim Bleier, Malte Bonart, Fabian Mörsheim, Mahdi Bohlouli, Margarita Nizhegorodov, Lisa Posch, Jürgen Maier, Tobias Rothmund, and Steffen Staab. 2018. Systematically Monitoring Social Media: The Case of the German Federal Election 2017. GESIS Papers 2018|04. GESIS. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-56149-4.

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Data/Software

Saeltzer, Marius, Sebastian Stier, Joscha Bäuerle, Manuela S. Blumenberg, Valeriya Mechkova, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, and Steven Wilson. 2021. Twitter accounts of candidates in the German federal election 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.4232/1.13790.

Stier, Sebastian, Sebastian A. Popa, and Daniela Braun. 2020. Political Campaigning on Twitter During the 2019 European Parliament Election Campaign. https://doi.org/10.7802/1.1995.

Stier, Sebastian, Arnim Bleier, Malte Bonart, Fabian Mörsheim, Mahdi Bohlouli, Margarita Nizhegorodov, Lisa Posch, Jürgen Maier, Tobias Rothmund, and Steffen Staab. 2018. Social Media Monitoring for the German Federal Election 2017. doi: https://doi.org/10.4232/1.12992.

Lecture

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Conference contribution

Stier, Sebastian. 2021. "Are populist party supporters trapped in online echo chambers?" DVPW Kongress 2021, Online, 2021-09-16.

Stier, Sebastian, and Simon Richter. 2021. "Learning about the unknown Spitzenkandidaten: The role of media exposure during the 2019 European Parliament elections." ECPR General Conference 2021, Online, 2021-09-02.

Stier, Sebastian, Frank Mangold, Michael Scharkow, and Johannes Breuer. 2021. "Post post‑broadcast democracy? News exposure in the age of online intermediaries." GOR 21: General Online Research, Online, 2021-09-08.

Stier, Sebastian. 2021. "What do "the people" want?: Analyzing online populist challenges to Europe." Volkswagen foundation status symposium challenges for Europe, Hannover, Germany, Munich, 2021-07-19.

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, and Pascal Siegers. 2020. "Integrated web tracking and surveys to study selective exposure to news by populist radical right party supporters." BigSurv20: Big Data meets Survey Science, Virtuell, 2020-11-13.

Silber, Henning, Johannes Breuer, Christoph Beuthner, Pascal Siegers, Bernd Weiß, Sebastian Stier, Florian Keusch, and Gummer Tobias. 2020. "Linking surveys and digital trace data: Experiences from two pilot studies on factors influencing informed consent." BigSurv20: Big Data meets Survey Science, Virtuell, 2020-11-20.

Haim, Mario, Sebastian Stier, and Johannes Breuer. 2020. "Open Science vs. Privacy?: A Case Study With Linked Web Tracking, Social Media, and Survey Data." Online: 70th Annual ICA Conference, Open Communication, 2020-05-12.

Stier, Sebastian, Frank Mangold, Michael Scharkow, and Johannes Breuer. 2020. "Selective vs. incidental exposure?: How online intermediaries commonly foster news exposure and diversity across countries and personal characteristics." Online: ECPR General Conference 2020, 2020-08-26.

Breuer, Johannes, Sebastian Stier, Pascal Siegers, Tobias Gummer, and Arnim Bleier. 2019. "Consent to Collecting and Linking Twitter Data in a Combined Webtracking and Survey Study." ESRA 2019 : 8th Conference of the European Survey Research Association, Zagreb (Croatia), 2019-07-17. https://www.europeansurveyresearch.org/conf2019/uploads/459/2790/4/Social_media_linking_Breuer_et_al_ESRA19_new.pdf.

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, Pascal Siegers, Tobias Gummer, and Arnim Bleier. 2019. "Enemies of the People: Party cues, populism and selective exposure to news – An investigation combining web tracking and survey data." DVPW und DGPuK PolKomm-Tagung 2019, 2019-02-09.

Breuer, Johannes, Sebastian Stier, and Pascal Siegers. 2019. "More Data, More Problems?: Chancen und Herausforderungen der datafizierten Gesellschaft für die sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung." Datafizierte Gesellschaft: Praktiken, Prozesse und Folgen der Datafizierung, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 2019-09-25. https://figshare.com/articles/More_data_more_problems_Chancen_und_Herausforderungen_der_datafizierten_Gesellschaft_f_r_die_sozialwissenschaftliche_Forschung/9897830.

Stier, Sebastian, Caterina Froio, and Wolf J. Schünemann. 2019. "Politicizing Europe in the transnational electoral arena." ECPR General Conference 2019, 2019-09-06.

Stier, Sebastian, and Ralph Schroeder. 2019. "Populism as a campaign strategy." DVPW - Comparative Politics Conference, 2019-03-21.

Stier, Sebastian, Nora Kirkizh, Caterina Froio, and Ralph Schroeder. 2019. "Populist Attitudes and Selective Exposure to News." ECPR General Conference 2019, Universität Wroclaw, Nürnberg, 2019-09-04.

Kirkizh, Nora, Sebastian Stier, Caterina Froio, and Ralph Schroeder. 2019. "Populist Attitudes and Selective Exposure to News." Workshop Digital Threats to Democracy, new york, Nürnberg, 2019-06-13.

Stier, Sebastian, Nora Kirkizh, Caterina Froio, and Ralph Schroeder. 2019. "Populist attitudes and selective exposure to news." EPSA Conference 2019, 2019-06-20.

Stier, Sebastian, Nora Kirkizh, Caterina Froio, and Ralph Schroeder. 2019. "Populist attitudes and selective exposure to news." Linking surveys and context data, Universität Wien, Wien, 2019-09-26.

Blohm, Michael, Oshrat Hochman, Sebastian Stier, and Jessica Walter. 2019. "The Influence of Media Coverage on Political Knowledge over the Data Collection Period." ESRA 2019 : 8th Conference of the European Survey Research Association, Zagreb (Croatia), 2019-07-18.

Rothmund, Tobias, Michelle Daniela Sprinz, Johannes Breuer, and Sebastian Stier. 2019. "What Makes People Susceptible to Political Misinformation?: A Critical Test of Conflicting Psychological Theories." 11th Conference of the Media Psychology Division, TU Chemnitz, 2019-09-05.

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, Pascal Siegers, and Gummer Tobias. 2019. "Where do they get their news?" ECPR General Conference 2019, Universität Wroclaw, Nürnberg, 2019-09-04.

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, Pascal Siegers, Tobias Gummer, and Arnim Bleier. 2018. "Improving Research on Political Behavior by Integrating Survey Data and Digital Trace Data." BigSurv18 Big Data Meets Survey Science, 2018-10-26.

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, Pascal Siegers, Tobias Gummer, and Arnim Bleier. 2018. "Selective exposure to political news: An investigation combining web tracking and survey data." ECPR General Conference 2018, 2018-08-25.

Stier, Sebastian, and Arnim Bleier. 2018. "Systematically Monitoring Social Media: The Case of the German Federal Election 2017." General Online Research Conference 2018, 2018-03-01.

Stier, Sebastian. 2017. "Internet diffusion and regime type: Temporal patterns in technology adoption." DVPW Section "Comparative Politics" Conference 2017.

Stier, Sebastian, Arnim Bleier, Haiko Lietz, and Markus Strohmaier. 2017. "Platform effects on social media: Topic salience in a representative survey, Facebook and Twitter during an election campaign." International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC²S² 2017), Cologne, 2017-07-13.

Stier, Sebastian. 2016. "Analyzing public responsiveness of politicians in a cross-media analysis." ECPR General Conference 2016.

Stier, Sebastian. 2016. "Partisan Framing of Political Debates on Twitter." WebScience Conference 2016.

Stier, Sebastian. 2016. "Right-wing protest movements and party politics: The case of Pegida and AfD in Germany." APSA Political Communication Preconference.

Stier, Sebastian. 2016. "Right-wing protest movements and party politics: The case of Pegida and AfD in Germany." DVPW-Themengruppe "Internet und Politik".

Stier, Sebastian, and Wolf J. Schünemann. 2016. "The equalisation hypothesis revisited - a comparative study of political Twitter debates." IPSA 24th World Congress of Political Science, 2016-07-24.

Stier, Sebastian. 2016. "Who Influences the Twitter Event Stream? Partisan Streams in the #SOTU Address." 2016 APSA Annual Meeting.

Schünemann, Wolf J., Stefan Steiger, and Sebastian Stier. 2015. "Is There a Transnationalization of Public Spheres?" ECPR General Conference 2015.

Stier, Sebastian, Wolf J. Schünemann, and Stefan Steiger. 2015. "Is There a Transnationalization of Public Spheres? A Comparison of Two Global Political Issues." BISA 40th Anniversary Conference 2015, 2015-06-16.

Becker, Maria, Marcus Müller, Wolf J. Schünemann, Jörn Stegmeier, Stefan Steiger, and Sebastian Stier. 2015. "Multi-Method Discourse Analysis of Twitter Communication. A Comparison of Two Global Political Issues." DiscourseNet Congress - Discourse: Language, Society, Critique, 2015-09-24.

Stier, Sebastian, and Wolf J. Schünemann. 2015. "Transnationalization in Twitter Studies – Metadata and Tweet Contents." Workshop “Studying the Use of Twitter in Political Communication” at GESIS CSS Wintersymposium.

Stier, Sebastian. 2014. "Democracy, Autocracy, and the News: The Impact of Regime Type on Media Freedom." MPSA Annual Conference.

Stier, Sebastian. 2014. "Political Determinants of E-Government Performance." ECPR General Conference 2014.

Stier, Sebastian. 2013. "Regimetyp und Medienfreiheit." Dreiländertagung.

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Contribution not at conference

Breuer, Johannes, and Sebastian Stier. 2021. "Combining survey data and digital behavioral data." Meet the Experts: GESIS online talks on Social Science Methods and Research Data, Online, 2021-07-08.

Saeltzer, Marius, and Sebastian Stier. 2021. "The German federal election: Social media data for scientific (re-)use." Meet the Experts: GESIS online talks on Social Science Methods and Research Data, Online, 2021-10-14.

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, and Pascal Siegers. 2018. "A review of articles combining survey data and digital trace data." Symposium: Integrating and Analyzing Data from Surveys and Social Media, 2018-02-19.

Organisation

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Event

Stier, Sebastian, Johannes Breuer, and Pascal Siegers. 2018. "Integrating and analyzing data from surveys and social media." Symposium at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), 2018-02-19 - 2018-02-20.