Welcome to the Online Communication Lab!
Digital communication shapes how people interact, process information, negotiate topics, and organize social life. The Online Communication Lab (OCL) at the Department of Communication at the University of Münster, led by Prof. Thorsten Quandt, explores these developments and their impact on individuals, groups, and society.
Our research covers public discourses, digital negotiation processes, toxic online communities, and disinformation, as well as media use in social media, games, and immersive virtual-reality environments—and their effects. We examine both the risks (e.g., polarization, cyberbullying, excessive use) and the opportunities (e.g., democratization, social support) of digital communication.
We work across the intersections of communication studies, psychology, empirical social science, and data science, combining qualitative methods, experimental designs, standardized surveys, computational approaches, and automated content analysis.
Our goal is to make digital communication processes visible and understandable - for researchers, students, societal stakeholders, and the wider public.
