Repeatedly Deceived? Identifying, Understanding, and Countering Cross-Platform Political Disinformation in the Everyday Lives of Adolescents and Young Adults (WIEGE)
Adolescents and young adults make intensive use of social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to stay informed about political issues. At the same time, this exposes them to an increased risk of encountering political disinformation—often not just once, but repeatedly and across multiple platforms. Such cross-platform exposure can amplify the effects of disinformation and shape attitudes and beliefs over the long term.
The joint research project WIEGE is the first to systematically investigate how political disinformation spreads across platforms, what effects it has on young people, and how effective countermeasures can be designed. The aim is to strengthen the resilience of adolescents and young adults to disinformation and thereby contribute to safeguarding democratic processes.
To achieve this, the project adopts an interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of communication science, computer science, and educational research. In a first step, an open and sustainable data infrastructure will be established, bringing together disinformation content from multiple platforms. Building on this, AI-based methods will be developed to automatically identify cross-platform patterns and strategies of disinformation.
Another key focus is the analysis of the effects of such content. Through surveys and experiments, the project examines how repeated exposure to disinformation from different sources influences perceptions of credibility, political attitudes, and the behavior of young people. Based on these findings, the project will develop target group–specific countermeasures. These include educational programs for schools, digital learning materials, and social media content designed to reach young people directly in their everyday media environments and strengthen their media literacy.
The project is carried out as a collaborative effort between academia and practice. The initiative originated at the Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy (DIID), where several of the participating researchers are affiliated. The consortium includes researchers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Practice partners include tech & teach and the content network funk.
The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) under the funding program “Trust in Democracy and the State: Recognizing and Countering Digital Disinformation”. The project runs for three years (April 2026 to March 2029) with a total funding volume of approximately 2.1 million Euro.