Projects
About VizTox
In today’s platform era, visually rich social media has become central to how people communicate, learn, and engage with the world. Yet these same visuals are increasingly exploited to mislead, manipulate, and radicalize audiences. From harmful video trends to extremist propaganda and disinformation campaigns, visual content plays a powerful role in shaping public perception and behavior.
VizTox is a large-scale, cross-cultural study centered on the concept of visual toxicity: the spread of visually rich content with harm potential—amplified by platform design, governance logic, and user engagement.
The 5-year project investigates harmful visual communication across three cultural-linguistic communities—German-, English-, and Chinese-speaking. Through five integrated work packages (WPs), the project leverages computational methods to examine the cross-cultural and translingual spread of toxic visuals and ways in which societies can build resilience against them.
