Volkswagen Foundation funds new research project on the instrumentalization of history in digital media

The Volkswagen Foundation has awarded funding to our new international research project, „Manipulation of the Past: Far-Right Ideologies and the Weaponization of History“, as part of its “Transformational Knowledge on Democracies under Change” programme.

Over the next four years, we will collaborate with researchers from Italy and Spain to examine how history is reinterpreted and strategically used in digital communication. Building on OCL’s research on digital communication, disinformation, and democratic resilience, the project brings together expertise from communication science and related disciplines to investigate one of the key challenges facing contemporary digital societies.

The project aims to improve our understanding of how far-right actors disseminate and instrumentalize historical narratives, particularly those relating to National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and the Franco regime, across digital media to shape political and societal debates. In addition, the project will develop evidence-based approaches to foster critical engagement with such content and make its findings accessible for education and society.

The project is led by Prof. Dr. Thorsten Quandt at the Online Communication Lab, University of Münster, alongside co-PIs Prof. Dr. Walter Quattrociocchi and Dr. Mathias Felipe De Lima Santos. The consortium actively collaborates with specialized civil society and digital organizations, including RED ACOGE, Complexium, and DataNinja.

We look forward to working with our partners and to sharing insights and results from the project over the coming years.

Open positions in the project will be announced shortly. Further information on the project can be found on our project page.