ECREA Conference in Ljubljana: Media Studies Group presents new studies on crisis communication and AI-assisted journalism

Prof. Martin Löffelholz, Dr. Aynur Sarısakaloğlu, Kathrin Schleicher and Johanna Radechovsky from the Department of Media Studies at the Technische Universität Ilmenau and Dr. Yi Xu from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena presented three papers at the annual conference of the European Communication Research and Education Association.

In the "AI and Automation" panel, Dr. Aynur Sarısakaloğlu presented key findings from an interdisciplinary systematic literature review on AI-assisted journalism. The focus was on current research trends and future perspectives for further scientific research in this area.

Yi Xu and Martin Löffelholz presented recent findings from a large-scale study of government communication during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which Dr. Pauline Estella from the Media Studies Group is also involved. The study focuses on the communication strategies used by governments of Western democracies to mitigate the effects of protracted crises, and the extra-organizational factors that influenced the development and use of these communication strategies. The study is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

In the third presentation, Johanna Radechovsky, Kathrin Schleicher, and Martin Löffelholz explained how German authorities perceived misinformation and disinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic, how they dealt with it, and how they designed their crisis communication to counteract disinformation. The study is part of a three-year research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and led by Prof. Löffelholz (https://www.mirkkomm.de).