Did you ever wonder how your life would look like without social media? Just imagine your daily routines without Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and all the other platforms? So how much time do you gain? How much of your information do you source from social media? How does that affect your life? Interesting food for thought, right?

At MCM we do not solely look at the business side of social media, but also try to focus on the larger picture. In our research we also investigate how social media affects our daily life and in sum society in general. Doing so, we focus on the bright and on the dark side effects of digitalization. On the one hand, people may better find and stay connected with friends or have an easier time finding information or being happy by constantly using social media. On the other side, social media usage may also bias our decision making or send us down a rabbit hole from which we never return or that fundamentally changes and manipulates our beliefs. As in case of disinformation.

MCM scholar Professor Raoul Kübler belongs to the leading marketing scholars, who investigate the impact of disinformation campaigns and the dark sides of social media usage. His latest research on the impact of disinformation and fake news in the 2016 and 2020 elections has won the Interactive Marketing Research Conference Best Paper Award 2020 and has been featured by GfK’s Market Intelligence Review and many news outlets in Germany. In his research Professor Kübler relies on large sets of social media data with billion pieces of user generated content to predict consumer and voter behaviour. With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning he and his team investigate how to predict social well being in times of a pandemic, the impact of fake news campaigns, and how social media data may betray sensitive consumer data. Alike his colleagues at MCM, Raoul belongs to the Top10% of most successful business professor in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria (according to A+ and A publications).

Raoul brings his passion for social media research right to the class room and teaches students how to set up efficient campaigns in his “Integrated Marketing Communications” class every summer. In addition, he offers since this year a “Data Science” class in which students learn how to combine social media data with the latest tools in AI and machine learning to gain consumer and customer insights.

Curious to learn how to use AI to prevent the spread of disinformation? Check out Professor Kübler’s publication here or directly apply for your place in our Master of Business program with its unique major and minor in Marketing option.