Understanding conflicts, improving communication

How does Germany dispute? Understanding social conflicts

The psychological perspective on the analysis of conflicts starts with the individual. KU Professor Elisabeth Kals and her team are investigating the origins and consequences of conflicts in interpersonal contact. "In most cases, the core of conflicts is the experience of injustice – and that is highly subjective", explains Kals. "Justice must be thought of in the plural. We don't have one single form of justice: It changes depending on the perspective." As a result, everyone involved in a conflict usually feels unfairly treated. The emotional core of this experience is particularly powerful, emphasizes Kals. She sees this as the root of the widespread feeling of indignation: "Whenever someone is full of indignation, there are always grievances, violations of norms and expectations and injustice in play."

Kals’ Eichstätt colleague Annika Sehl and her journalism team – in cooperation with journalism professor Sonja Kretzschmar (UniBwM) and her team – will shed light on how the media contribute to the perception and resolution of social conflicts. To this end, they examine which news media the interviewees use and how they feel about these media. Special attention is also paid to the dynamics that are involved in the emergence and resolution of conflicts on social media platforms. Which people are involved in conflicts here? And what is their goal? The observed usage patterns and attitudes are also placed in relation to personal conflict behavior in order to build a substantive bridge to psychology and political sociology. 

Strengthening conflict competence – actively shaping peaceful coexistence

The title of the overall KOKO project stands for "Understanding conflicts and communicating skills". Accordingly, the team attaches importance not only to the multi-perspective analysis of conflict dynamics, but in particular to the transfer of research findings. These are to be made accessible to the general public and translated into intervention strategies for a cooperative approach to social conflicts for stakeholders from education, the media and politics.

In this context, journalism studies professor Annika Sehl and her colleague Rebecca Strohmeier designed two sub-studies in collaboration with the journalism department at the UniBwM. In the first study, the researchers looked at how social polarization trends influence journalistic work. To this end, they conducted guided interviews with editors and social media managers from German newsrooms. The result paints a worrying picture, says Annika Sehl. Over the past few years, journalists have increasingly had to experience hostile behavior or were even attacked as a result of their reporting. "Especially when it comes to social conflict topics such as migration, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, the Middle East conflict or gender-sensitive language, insults, threats of violence or even death threats are on the agenda - both digitally and out on the street." Against the backdrop of social developments, the requirements for researching and publishing articles have also increased immensely. The same applies to community management, i.e. the support and moderation of topics after publication, especially in social media.

The study also shows that editorial offices have now adapted their workflows and publication strategies in order to curb potential escalations, especially on social media platforms. Media organizations have also developed support and protection measures to train their staff in dealing with attacks and protect them from worse. Such individual and editorial strategies are immensely important in order to be able to practice journalism free of pressure in a democratic sense, says Sehl. But she also emphasizes: "We also need political support, for example with platform regulation, and a social rethink of how we want to communicate and interact with each other." The findings will be used to develop guidelines for journalistic practice, which will be passed on to newsrooms and media organizations in workshops.

Using the potential of the media

In the second sub-study, the journalism team is currently looking at how reporting on social conflict issues should ideally be designed in order to counteract polarization tendencies. The researchers developed an experiment with more than 2,500 people, for whom they created articles that meet the requirements of the concept of "discursive journalism". Discursive journalism consciously strives for multi-perspective and contextualizing reporting in order to promote openness to other opinions and mutual understanding. The researchers expect the first results in the coming weeks.

The potential of media to strengthen conflict management skills in the population is also the focus of the sub-project of the team led by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Maes and Dr. Mathias Jaudas from the UniBwM. They regularly go on a "Streitkultour", a tour with the topic of practicing a healthy culture of dispute, across Germany's pedestrian zones, most recently this summer. In a recording truck, people can report on their conflicts about everyday topics or political issues. Two of the team's psychologists subsequently supplement these interviews with conflict psychology findings and specific recommendations for action. This results in edutainment-style videos that have been distributed via YouTube, TikTok and Instagram since the beginning of 2023. The aim is to provide suggestions for dealing with conflicts.