Institute for Research on Far Right Extremism (IRex)

Dr. Kilian Buehling

Postdoctoral research associate

Dr. Kilian Buehling is a postdoctoral research associate at the IRex in the field of Media and Public Spheres lead by Prof. Dr. Annett Heft.

He researches information diffusion, transnational communication processes, and network dynamics of anti-democratic and conspiracy theory groups. To analyze the role of fringe social media platforms and hyperpartisan media in overall political information ecosystems, he focuses on comparative empirical studies and the advancement of the necessary methodology of analyzing digital trace data.

Research projects

Current research projects:

Identification and classification if radical and extremist actors on Telegram, URL: https://fit.uni-tuebingen.de/Project/Details?id=11873

Further functions and activities

Academic service:

  • since 2024: Early career scholar representative for the Methods division of the German Society for Communication Science (DGPuK)

CV

  • since 2025: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Institute for Research on Far Right Extremism (IRex), University of Tübingen
  • 2021–2025: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Free University Berlin / Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society – The German Internet Institute, Germany
  • 2024: Visiting Researcher, University of Zurich, Department of Communication and Media Research, Switzerland
  • 2017– 2021: Research Associate, Research Group Knowledge and Technology Transfer, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
  • 2019: Visiting Researcher, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, USA

Publications

Schulze H., Buehling, K., Zehring, M. (forthcoming). The Telegram COVID-19 Protest Dataset 2020–2022. Computational Communication Research.

Schindler, J., Jha, S., Zhang, X., Buehling, K., Heft, A., & Barahona, M. (2025). LGDE: Local Graph-based Dictionary Expansion. Computational Linguistics, 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1162/coli_a_00562

Buehling, K., Zhang, X., & Heft, A. (2025). Veiled conspiracism: Particularities and convergence in the styles and functions of conspiracy-related communication across digital platforms. New Media & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251315756

Heft, A., Buehling, K., Zhang, X., Schindler, D., & Milzner, M. (2024). Challenges of and approaches to data collection across platforms and time: Conspiracy-related digital traces as examples of political contention. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 21(3), 323–339. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.2250779

Buehling, K. (2024). Message Deletion on Telegram: Affected Data Types and Implications for Computational Analysis. Communication Methods and Measures, 18(1), 92–114. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2023.2183188

Buehling, K., & Heft, A. (2023). Pandemic Protesters on Telegram: How Platform Affordances and Information Ecosystems Shape Digital Counterpublics. Social Media + Society, 9(3), 20563051231199430. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231199430

Jost, P., Heft, A., Buehling, K., Zehring, M., Schulze, H., Bitzmann, H., & Domahidi, E. (2023). Mapping a Dark Space: Challenges in Sampling and Classifying Non- Institutionalized Actors on Telegram. M&K Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft, 71(3–4), 212–229. https://doi.org/10.5771/1615-634X-2023-3-4-212

Heft, A., & Buehling, K. (2022). Measuring the diffusion of conspiracy theories in digital information ecologies. Convergence, 13548565221091808. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221091809

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