Dissertation projects

All completed doctoral theses can be found here.

Dissertation project, Johanna Radechovsky

Misinformation and disinformation in the digital age: perception, consequences, countermeasures

Brief description

Social mediaare now considered the central infrastructure of public and political discourse, but at the same time are a driving force behind the growing spread of misinformation and disinformation. Just like journalistic and official actors, research is also lagging far behind in addressing the resulting and persistent problems. The aim of the dissertation is to shed light on the dynamic and complex field of misinformation, communicators and recipients and its interdependencies from a theoretical, empirical and practice-oriented perspective and to make it relevant and sustainable for both research and the journalistic profession.

Dissertation project, Francis Alpers

The media construction of scientific expertise during reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic

Brief description

Journalists are dependent on scientific expert sources in their daily work, especially when it comes to multi-layered and complex topics such as the COVID-19 pandemic, as they themselves lack the necessary expertise in the respective fields. However, in addition to content, scientific expert sources also fulfill stylistic functions - they convey seriousness, credibility and objectivity and thus increase the perceived professionalism of the journalistic media offering. They therefore play a decisive role in the question of the extent to which reporting shapes the perception of health-related risks and countermeasures in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. The dissertation starts here by examining in more detail how (or whether at all) the expertise of the scientists quoted is legitimized and constructed. To this end, news articles from online daily media from a total of seven US and European countries are compared with each other.

Dissertation project, Suay Ceren Atay

Artificial intelligence in risk and crisis communication - A multi-method study

Brief description

This dissertation project aims to explore the incorporation of artificial intelligence in risk and crisis communication to improve the efficiency of strategies used in crisis management. Therefore, a mixed-methods approach will be used to find out how AI can improve response time, accuracy and stakeholder engagement during a crisis. AI has the potential to transform crisis management by analysing real-time data, creating predictive models and providing automated communication tools to reduce misinformation, optimize resource utilization and increase the resilience of organizations. The research identifies the benefits and challenges of such integration and thus provides best practices for policy makers and communication professionals to improve crisis response. The results of this dissertation are intended to make a theoretical and practical contribution to the development, tuning and further improvement of AI tools that are developed and deployed in real-world conditions.