Harald Sick

Harald Sick is a Researcher at the Institute of Journalism, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, affiliated with the Chair of Political Communication led by Prof. Dr. Marcus Maurer. Concurrently, he serves as a Research Associate for Network Analysis at the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ), contributing to the project "Network against Online Hate and Disinformation." His work is supported by the DFG project "Identification and Classification of Radical and Extremist Actors on Telegram."

He holds a degree in Political Science from Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (2005–2011) and has pursued doctoral studies at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2015, focusing on lobbying influence in EU legislative processes.

His research specializes in:

• Political communication dynamics, particularly right-wing extremism in digital spaces
• Computational methods including (discourse) network analysis, Graph Neural Networks, and LLMs
• Cross-platform strategies of extremist communities (e.g., Telegram, YouTube)
• Monetization of online hate speech and AI-driven radicalization

His publications reveal a consistent focus on digital extremism, disinformation ecosystems, and computational social science. Recent works analyze generative AI in hate networks, meme-based radicalization, and economic incentives for extremist content. Trends indicate deep expertise in network statistics, crisis exploitation by extremists, and multi-platform discourse manipulation.

He collaborates with interdisciplinary teams (e.g., Machine Against the Rage research collective) and maintains freelance roles in political data analysis. No advising activities or scientific awards are documented.