THREATPIE - NORFACE GOVERNANCE • NORFACE Governance

Project focus

The THREATPIE project examines how current changes in political information affect the conditions for a healthy democracy. Based on the concept of ‘political information environment’ (PIE), it considers the supply and demand of political information. Supply refers to the quantity and quality of news and public affairs content provided by traditional and new media; request captures the amount and type of information the public consumes.

Areas of research

Recent changes in PIEs may lead to a growing number of uninformed, misinformed, or selectively informed citizens. This increase potentially endangers the functioning of democracy. To address this concern, the study will investigate:

(1) how do citizens acquire political information, and how does this affect their political attitudes and behavior,

(2) what is the content and quality of the information citizens are exposed to,

(3) where do divides between well-informed and less well-informed citizens exist, across and within European societies,

(4) how can citizens be empowered to navigate their PIE and find valuable information.

Methodology

The project aims at achieving these goals through a series of comparative, innovatively designed studies, including web-tracking, comparative surveys, focus groups, and survey-embedded experiments in 10+ countries across Europe and the US.

Project Leader:
Professor Dr. David Nicolas Hopmann, University of Southern Denmark (Denmark)

Prof. Dr. David Nicolas Hopmann is a Professor at the Center for Journalism, Department of Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark. His research focuses on the antecedents of media content and its effects on consumers and societies and informal political communication.

Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. Claes H. de Vreese, University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands)

Prof. Dr. Claes H. de Vreese is a University Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Society (2021-), focusing on media and democracy at the University of Amsterdam. He holds the Chair in political communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research ASCoR. He (co-)directs the UvA Platform Information, Communication, and the Data Society (ICDS), including the Research Priority Areas Communication, Personalised Communication, and Human(e) AI. He is the founding Director of the Center for Politics and Communication (www.polcomm.org). He is also Chair of Social Sciences in the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies DIAS and founding, incoming (2021) Scientific Director of the Digital Democracy Center at the University of Southern Denmark. He is a member of the ICA Executive Committee and served as President 2020-21. His research interests include the role of automation, algorithms, and artificial intelligence in democratic processes. This includes microtargeting, news recommenders, social media platforms, disinformation, comparative journalism research, the effects of news, public opinion, and European integration. His research has been funded by several science foundation grants, including an ERC grant, VENI, and VICI grants from the Dutch Science Foundation and grants from various EU research programs. He has received awards for research from the International Communication Association, the Danish Science Foundation, and the Holberg Foundation. He is the recipient of the Swanson Career Achievement Award (ICA, 2018), the NeFCA Career Award (2019), and he is an elected Fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, the International Communication Association, and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences.

Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. Peter Van Aelst, Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium)

Prof. Dr. Peter Van Aelst is a research professor at the political science department at the University of Antwerp and a founding member of the research group 'Media, Movements and Politics' (M2P). His research focuses on political communication.

Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. Christian Schemer, Johannes Gutenberg University (Germany)

Prof. Dr. Christian Schemer is a professor of Communication at the Department of Communication of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. His focus of research is:

Communication on and prejudice against social groups
Political news coverage and political communication effects
Advertising effects and consumer behavior
Research methodology

Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. James Stanyer, Loughborough University (UK)

Prof. Dr. James Stanyer gained a Ph.D. in Government from the London School of Economics in 1999. His research and teaching interests lie primarily in national and transnational political communication. James has taught at various universities. In 1997 he was appointed to a temporary lectureship in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge University. He has also held visiting lectureships in the Department of Politics, Queen Mary, University of London, and City University, London. After completing his ESRC funded Ph.D., he gained a lectureship at the Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, where he remained until he started at Loughborough in September 2005. James has been principal investigator and co-investigator on projects funded by the ESRC, the BBC Trust, the UK government, and third sector organizations. In addition, he has served on the editorial boards of various journals, is a member of the Network of European Political Communication Scholars, and is a founder member of the COST Action IS1308, Populist Political Communication in Europe.

Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. Ana Sophia Cardenal, Fundació per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Spain)

Prof. Dr. Ana Cardenal is a Law and Political Science Department lecturer. Her field of expertise is politics. She is an expert in comparative politics, public opinion, social media, voting behavior.

Project Investigator:
Professor Dr. Agnieszka Stępińska, Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland)

Prof. Dr. Agnieszka Stępińska is a professor at the Department of Social Communication at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism at the University of A. Mickiewicz in Poznań. Her research focuses on political communication and election marketing. In addition, he conducts research on journalists and the content of media messages. She has participated in several international research projects, including Foreign News on TV (2007-2012). Currently, she is a member of the COST IS 1308 Populist Political Communication in Europe: Comprehending the Challenge of Mediated Political Populism for Democratic Politics and vice-president of Working Group 2: Populism and Media and head of the Polish research team under the Journalistic Role Performance Around the Globe project. She is also a member of the Central European Journal of Communication and Central European Political Studies editorial board.

Project Investigator:
Dr. Karolina Koc-Michlska, Audencia Business School (France)

Dr. Karolina Koc-Michalska is a CITS Visiting Research Scholar from June 2017 through September 2017. She is an Associate Professor at Audencia Business School and Associate Researcher at CEVIPOF Sciences-Po Paris, France. Her research interest focuses on political parties’ strategic online communication during the electoral time, mainly social media usage and the new media effects on societies. She extends this work through comparative research within the European countries and US. During her stay at CITS, she will explore the motivations leading to political participation and the role of fake news in societies.

Researcher:
Professor Dr. Toril Aalberg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway)

Prof. Dr. Toril Aalberg is a Professor at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. She has held a Ph.D. in Political Science since 2001. From 2014 through 2018, she was Chair of the NEPOCS-initiated COST Action Populist Political Communication in Europe (www.populistcommunication.eu). In addition, Aalberg has had several visiting appointments, including at the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) Oslo, Trinity College Dublin, Stanford University, and University of California, Berkeley.

Aalberg’s research focuses on comparative politics, political behavior, and communication, including studies of election campaigns, public opinion, the relationship between media and politics, and the role of stereotypes. She has published extensively on these topics in international peer-reviewed journals and written and edited several books. She is on the editorial boards of Political Communication, International Journal of Press Politics, and International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

Researcher:
Professor Dr. Nicoleta Corbu, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania)

Prof. Dr. Nicoleta Corbu is a Professor at the College of Communication and Public Relations, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, where she currently coordinates the Center for Research in Communication and the Multidisciplinary Ph.D. school. She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant in the United States (the University of Georgia, 2008-2009). In 2012, she was visiting professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. Her research focuses on media effects, political communication, online disinformation. Her research has been published in international journals, such as European Journal of Communication, European Journal of Political Research, International Journal of Press-Politics, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Journal of Applied Communication Research.

Researcher:
Professor Dr. Frank Esser, University of Zurich (Switzerland)

Prof. Dr. Frank Esser is a Professor of International & Comparative Media Research at the University of Zurich. Before coming to Zurich in 2006, he was an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. In addition, he has held visiting positions at the Universities of Oklahoma, Texas-Austin, California-San Diego, and Oslo. He was Chair of ICA’s Journalism Studies Division, Chair of ECREA’s Political Communication Section, and currently serves as Chair of ICA’s Political Communication Division. He is also Associate Editor of the journal Political Communication.

His research focuses on cross-national studies of news journalism and political communication. His publications center around the following themes: International Comparative Research, Mediatization of Politics, Digital Journalism, Western Media Systems, Political Populism and Media, Misinformation, Media Use in Polarized and Fragmented Political Information Environments. He serves on the editorial boards of Political Communication, International Journal of Press/Politics, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Communication Theory, and Journalism.

Researcher:
Professor Dr. Jörg Matthes, University of Vienna (Austria)

Prof. Dr. Jörg Matthes is a Professor of Communication Science and Head of the Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich.

His research focuses on advertising effects, public opinion formation, political persuasion, and empirical methods. He has published more than 160 journal articles, and his research received awards from the German Communication Association, the International Communication Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the German Psychological Association, the World Association for Public Opinion Research, and the Swiss Association for Market and Social Research. In 2014, he received the Young Scholar Award by ICA, and two years later, he received AEJMC’s Hillier Krieghbaum Under 40 Award. He is currently Associate Editor of The Journal of Advertising, former Editor-in-Chief of Communication Methods & Measures, and former Associate Editor of the Journal of Communication, Communication Methods & Measures, and Human Communication Research.

Researcher:
Professor Dr. Tamir Sheafer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)

Prof. Dr. Tamir Sheafer is a Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Communication. He is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He serves on the editorial boards of Political Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, and the International Journal of Press/Politics. His research focuses on four primary areas. First, from an actor-centered perspective, he investigates charismatic skills, personalization, and information processing. Second, he explores the role of political value proximity and political narrative proximity between actors in politics. Third, he examines media effects in elections, particularly the impact of valence in agenda-setting and priming. Fourth, in a methodological project, he and his team develop cutting-edge technological research solutions that implement the principles of discourse analysis. They believe that text – the most basic form of human communication, expression, and transfer of information – can be understood best when incorporating context. Their analytical tools provide a springboard for research in many fields, including discourse analysis, political communication, political representation, public diplomacy, and marketing.

Researcher:
Professor Dr. Sergio Splendore, Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy)

Prof. Dr. Sergio Splendore has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the Università degli Studi di Milano since 2013. He teaches Media Sociology (undergraduate), Journalism, media and politics (postgraduate), and Public Opinion (School of Journalism Walter Tobagi). He received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences (NASP). He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Loughborough and Université Grenoble Alpes. He is a member of The Worlds of Journalism Study. Sergio’s research interests include digital journalism, journalists’ professionalization, and media trust; he has published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Journalism, Journalism Studies, New Media and Society, and Media, Culture, and Society, among others.

Researcher:
Professor Dr. Jesper Strömbäck, University of Gothenburg (Sweden)

Prof. Dr. Jesper Strömbäck is a Professor in Journalism and Political Communication at the Department of Journalism, Media, and Communication at the University of Gothenburg. His research mainly focuses on political news, the impact of changing media environments on political knowledge and knowledge resistance, media effects, the mediatization of politics, comparative political communication research, and political public relations. Altogether, he has published more than 200 books, chapters, and journal articles, among them the edited volumes “Mediatization of Politics. Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies” (edited with Frank Esser, 2014), “Populist Political Communication in Europe” (edited with Toril Aalberg, Frank Esser, Carsten Reinemann and Claes de Vreese, 2017), and “Media and Migration Attitudes in Europe. A Comparative Approach” (edited with Christine Meltzer, Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Christian Schemer, and Hajo Boomgaarden, 2021).

Researcher:
Dr. Václav Štětka, Loughborough University (England)

Dr. Václav Štětka has been a Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, since 2016. Previously he worked at Masaryk University in Brno, at the University of Oxford, and Charles University in Prague. His research interests encompass political communication and the role of new media, media systems in Central and Eastern Europe, media freedom, and journalistic autonomy. He is Principal Investigator of the ESRC-funded project “The Illiberal Turn: News Consumption, Polarization and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe” (https://www.illiberal-turn.eu/). In addition, he is an active contributor to several international research projects and networks, including the Digital News Report (Oxford University) and Media Pluralism Monitor (European University Institute in Florence). Since 2019 he has been a member of the Committee for Editorial Independence of the Czech media house Economia.

Researcher:
Professor Dr. Yannis Theocharis, Technical University of Munich (Germany)

Prof. Dr. Yannis Theocharis is a Professor and Chair of Digital Governance at the Department of Governance, Technical University of Munich. After completing his studies in new media (LSE) and political science (UCL) in 2011, he held the positions of Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and Research Fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen, and Professor of Innovative Methods in Media and Communication at the ZeMKI, University of Bremen. Yannis’ work focuses on the effects of digital media on political participation, collective action, and uncivil communication. His work has appeared in communication, political science, and interdisciplinary journals such as Political Communication, New Media & Society, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Journal of Communication, Journal of Democracy, European Political Science Review, European Journal of Political Research, and Electoral Studies, among others. His book “Political Participation in a Changing World: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges in the Study of Citizen Engagement” was published recently by Routledge (2018). He is a member of New York University’s SMaPP Global group.

Researcher:
Dr. Patrick van Erkel, University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Dr. Patrick van Erkel currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Antwerp. His work focuses on elections, public opinion, voting behavior, and political communication.

Researcher:
Denis Halagiera, Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland)

Denis Halagiera is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Social Communication. He graduated Journalism and Social Communication at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Journalism at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He is a member of the Polish Society of Social Communication. Also, Halagiera is a scholarship holder of the AMU Rector’s scholarship for the best doctoral students. His research focuses on mass communication issues, emphasizing the media representation of social problems.

Researcher:
Dr. Christine E. Meltzer, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany)

Dr. Christine E. Meltzer has been a research assistant (postdoc) in the department of general communication research, Institute for Journalism, JGU Mainza, since 01/2020. Her main research areas are:

Political communication; especially media and migration
Media and violence, especially the visibility of violence against women
Reception and effects research; especially cultivation research

Researcher:
Ludovic Terren, Open University of Catalonia (Spain)

Ludovic Terren is a political communication researcher working on digital media and democracy. He is also a Ph.D. and research fellow at the Open University of Catalonia.

Researcher:
Luisa Gehle, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany)

Luisa Gehle is a research assistant at the Institute for Journalism at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz since 03/2021.

NORFACE GOVERNANCE -

The Threats and Potentials of a Changing Political Information Environment (THREATPIE)

Project focus

Areas of research

Methodology

Team