OCL Team Visits the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada

In February 2026, a team from the Online Communication Lab (OCL) followed the invitation of the Bridge Research Consortium and visited the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. Prof. Dr. Thorsten Quandt, Jana Johanna Klapproth, and Lena Maria Küpper engaged in a series of workshops with the teams led by Dr. Heidi Tworek and Dr. Chris Tenove (both UBC), working intensively on a joint research project on online debates surrounding vaccination.

In addition to this internal project work and networking, several public talks and exchange formats took place. The OCL team was part of the following events:

• Guest Talk on “Capturing the Pulse of Public Discourse at the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary. At the invitation of JC Boucher, our approach to analyzing topic dynamics was presented and discussed with researchers prior to the program in Vancouver.
• Panel discussion titled “Navigating Online Discourse in a Polarized Ecosystem,” organized by the Bridge Research Consortium, in front of representatives from academia, public health, and policy. Together with Heidi Tworek, we discussed our joint research on digital platforms and the interplay between media, political actors, and social movements, using vaccine debates in Germany and Canada as a case study.
• “Lunch-and-Learn,” sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions and the Centre for Computational Social Science (both UBC), and conducted with the support of the Bridge Research Consortium. The session, “Computational Social Science in Action: Studying Vaccine and Climate Policy Narratives,” focused on innovative methodological approaches, including multivariate time series analysis. Two presentations were followed by a roundtable discussion with Mark Shakespear (PhD Candidate, UBC Sociology), Laura Nelson (Director, Centre for Computational Social Science), and Chris Tenove.
• Visiting the seminar “Decoding Social Media,” led by Ori Tenenboim. We presented to a group of Master’s students in journalism on ongoing and completed projects under the overarching theme “Social Media: Risks and Opportunities,” including topics such as disinformation in hybrid media environments and online discourse on body positivity.

We would like to thank our hosts for the invitation and look forward to continued collaboration!

Photos

• 

• 

• 

•