Distributed and Prepared. A new theory of citizens` public connection networks in the age of datafication (PREPARE)

"Hvorfor er beredskapskommunikasjon så vanskelig?" (2016) in: Totalberedskap, red. Per Martin Norheim-Martinsen. Gyldendal Akademisk. Authors:Trine Syvertsen & Hallvard Moe.

Academic book chapter. The chapter deals with communication about preparedness and self-preparedness in Norway, and why public information about this often does not have the effect the sender wants. The authors highlight three main points that help explain this; People are not isolated knowledge bearers who are always connected to the public. We should focus on people's varying "communication readiness", i.e. the ability to disconnect and reconnect when you need to. And finally: Information is filtered through many voices, with their own perceptions and opinions about what is right and important. These points emphasize the importance of seeing citizens' communication repertoire as a diverse entity.

Forthcoming 2026: Imaginaries of Problematic Places. Everyday Life and Violence. Palgrave Macmillan. Author: Katharina Wuropulos.

2025

Who should act, when, and where? The SCOPE framework for establishing responsibility and legitimacy in digital citizenship (2025) Communication Theory. Author: Emilija Gagrcin.

Scientific article. The article introduces the SCOPE framework for understanding how users interpret and negotiate social actions on social media. It distinguishes between responsibility (who should act) and legitimacy (who can act with authority). Drawing on affordance theory, boundary theory, and heuristics, SCOPE shows how platform features shape conditions for action. Users interpret signals about visibility, relationships, spatial mandates, and time pressure, translating these into boundary work that informs judgments of responsibility and legitimacy. The article proposes simple decision matrices with two questions: when and by whom action is expected. SCOPE shifts the focus from abstract ideals of “good citizenship” to situated practices of boundary negotiation in digital platforms.

Hyperlocal, ambient & stratified: the civic life of residential chat groups on instant messengers (2025) Information, Communication & Society. Author: Olga Pasitselska & Emilija Gagrcin.

Scientific article. Broken elevators, leaking pipes, and noisy neighbors – everyday frustrations of urban living increasingly appear in instant messaging apps (IMs) chat groups. In turn, IMs become a part of digital civic infrastructures in contemporary urban housing. We examine how IMs function as civic infrastructures through interviews with 41 residents across Israel and Germany. We find that chat groups create awareness of shared concerns while fostering ambient responsibility – a sense of contributing by reporting issues rather than resolving them. IMs lower barriers to coordination and facilitate collective action around immediate concerns. Simultaneously, they tend to reproduce existing inequalities and create new forms of exclusion. Our findings illuminate how everyday digital tools become consequential civic infrastructures.

What Democracy Are We Talking About? (2025) Journal of Information Policy.
Authors: Kari Karppinen, Hallvard Moe, Jakob Svensson.

Scientific article. This article examines the debate surrounding generative artificial intelligence and its impact on democracy, and how different normative understandings of democracy shape the discussion. The article identifies three main themes—transparency, injustice, and epistemic challenges—and argues that the debate often lacks theoretical grounding. By linking these themes to three democratic perspectives—the monitorial, the deliberative, and the radical—the authors call for a more nuanced and theory-based approach to regulating generative AI.

Chat groups as local civic infrastructure: A case study of “Solidary neighborhood help” Telegram groups during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany (2025) New Media & Society. Authors: Olga Pasitselska, Kilian Buehlin, Emilija Gagrcin.

Scientific article. This article explores how chat groups, such as those on the Telegram app, function as “meso-spaces” - digital environments that enable sustained dialogue and collective action, especially during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an analysis of 47 public Telegram groups in Germany, the authors identify a tension between political discussion and practical help, managed either through horizontal participation or strict moderation. The study shows that such chat groups can serve as local civic infrastructure, though primarily for privileged urban citizens, and discusses the implications for democratic theory and practice.

How people make sense of climate issues in the news (2025) Journalism. Authors: Hallvard Moe, Brita Ytre-Arne, Solveig Høegh-Krohn. 

This article examines how people understand climate news. In a study conducted in Norway, involving multiple interviews and open questionnaires, participants were asked to share their thoughts on three current news stories. The examples were about climate change on local, national, and global levels, with varying degrees of conflict and different narrative styles and images. The study found that news articles with different characteristics led to three ways of forming opinions: uncertain reasoning, moral attitudes, and recurring climate discussions. The study helps to understand how different types of journalism can increase interest in climate news. Methodologically, the study is innovative because it uses real news examples. Finally, it discusses why the most important aspects of climate change often make the least sense as news.

2024

Revolutions: an introduction to the #AoIR2023 special issue (2024) Information, Communication & Society. Author: Özlem Demirkol-Tønnesen.

Introduction. This paper introduces the ‘Revolutions’ themed special issue which includes research presented at the 24th annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference (2023). The conference theme centered on revolutions, highlighting the connections between digital transformations and social movements across time and space. Focusing on the affordances of digital technologies for mobilization, resistance and achieving social justice, but also their limitations in enabling lasting social change, the conference theme asked participants to reflect on the tradeoffs between empowerment and subordination, and the relationship of digital ‘revolutions’ to racial justice, anticolonial movements, and the rising tide of white supremacist and fascist mobilization. This special issue includes six papers that offer new angles on critically assessing the groundbreaking early ideas underpinning online networked spaces and questioning the revolutionary potential of the internet today. The range of papers includes contexts related to platform power and user agency, online political subcultures and memeification, the balance between visibility and power for content creators revolutionizing live streaming and influencer cultural industries, and perceptions of AI’s revolutionary impact on romantic relationships. The studies in this issue also offer a global view, with geographies stretching from the MENA region and China to subcultures and marginalized groups in Western contexts such as the US and Canada.

Embrace or leave social media? On the viability of public service media organizations’ strategies facing platform power (2024). European Journal of Communication. Author: Hallvard Moe.

Scientific article. This article addresses the question of whether a withdrawal from social media platforms represents a viable strategy in the ongoing relational power negotiations between public service media and platforms, and if so, under what conditions. Recent diverging strategic efforts from public service broadcasters in two European countries – Germany and Norway – serve as illustrations of how existing organizations attempt to manoeuvre the current online realm dominated by platforms. I discuss findings from qualitative studies of news use in Norway and draw on comparative survey data on news use. I propose that high levels of trust in public service media, and widespread use of the public service broadcaster's own sites and offers, are key prerequisites to consider when assessing the viability of a withdrawal from third-party platforms in different countries. By zooming in on one type of media organization (public service broadcasters), and looking at different such organizations’ characteristics and context, and the dynamics of their relations to online platforms, the paper contributes to our understanding of platform power.

Defending Democracy: Prioritizing the Study of Epistemic Inequalities (tandfonline.com) (2024) Political Communication, 1-7. Authors: Emilija Gagrcin, Hallvard Moe.

Discussion paper. Digital media have fundamentally altered how knowledge is produced and distributed, often being blamed for contemporary democratic problems. This short essay examines recent contributions to normative democratic theory, focusing on three questions: 1) characterization of media-related threats, 2) media and communication aspects supportive of democracy, and 3) diagnosis of democracy’s core challenges. Our reading reveals that while digital media is seen to contribute to the epistemic crisis, the core problem can be traced back to the profound impact of communicative capitalism on our epistemic infrastructures. We call for political communication scholars to prioritize the study of epistemic inequalities by critically examining and addressing the pervasive influence of market logic in both our work and the subject of study. In doing so, we can make an empirically informed contribution to democratic theory’s quest to defend democracy.

Jürgen Habermas: Den nye offentligheten: Strukturendring og deliberativ politikk (2024) Tidsskrift for Samfunnsforskning. Author: Hallvard Moe.

Book review. A review of the Norwegian-language edition of Jürgen Habermas: Ein neuer Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit und die deliberative Politik (2022, in German). Only available in Norwegian.

2023

Operationalizing distribution as a key concept for public sphere theory. A call for ethnographic sensibility of different social worlds (2023) Communication Theory. Author: Hallvard Moe.

Scientific paper. This article takes issue with public sphere theories’ lack of focus on the consequences of social inequality. Citizens divide the work of following politics between them, and we need a cohesive conceptualization of such divisions, through and beyond today’s intrusive media and with attention to social inequalities. Instead of ideals of fully informed individual citizens, I propose we take the empirical fact of distribution of citizens’ public connection as a starting point and anchor our theoretical ideals in the social world with an “ethnographic sensibility.” Doing so facilitates an operationalized concept of distribution of citizens’ public connection into four elements: issues, arenas, and communicative modes, which citizens variously rely on over time. With such an operationalization, we can assess when and for whom the distribution of public connection goes too far and disfavors certain citizens. This helps bring public sphere theory beyond the conundrum of our societies’ paradoxically uninformed citizens.