Christian Baccarella

Prof. Dr. Christian Baccarella studied Business Administration at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and the University of Hull (UK). After completing his studies, he was a Research and Teaching Associate at the Chair of Industrial Management (FAU) from 2010 to 2015, where he also completed his PhD in 2014. Since 2023, he is professor of innovation management at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. His research focuses on topics such as innovation marketing, business model innovation, creativity, social media, and consumer perceptions of open innovation activities.

Exploring the Dark Side of Social Media

Social media have fundamentally changed the way we create, share, and consume information. Although existing research focuses mainly on the positive aspects of social media, there is undoubtedly also a “dark side”. More and more attention is therefore dedicated to phenomena such as fake news or cyberbullying. However, especially these considerably negative aspects are largely neglected and thus offer significant potential for future research. Further theoretical and empirical work is therefore necessary to better understand the underlying mechanisms of this “dark side” so that individuals and companies can better protect themselves against it. Therefore, the goals of this research project are to explore “dark” social media phenomena and to develop theories and models that shed light on this dark side.