On December 1, 2025, the research and development project Extremism and Conflicts: Mobilization Potential and Online Opinion Formation in Austria (ECHO) was launched. Over the course of the next 20 months, it will be implemented by Jörg Matthes as principal investigator in collaboration with Rinat Meerson, SYNYO GmbH, and the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology.
ECHO investigates how social media influence opinion formation, polarization, and radicalization processes in Austria in the context of international conflicts. Methodologically, the project combines a quantitative survey on media use, expert interviews, and a retrospective case study, complemented by AI-based analyses of extremist narratives and an experimental evaluation of de-polarization approaches. Based on its empirical findings, ECHO develops evidence-based materials to support de-polarization and media literacy, which feed directly into practice-oriented prevention measures. The project is funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under the Austrian Security Research Programme KIRAS. The total FFG funding for the research directly conducted under the umbrella of our department is € 62.300.