Arbeitsbereich: Communication Studies

Since 2018, Merja Mahrt is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University. She has previously worked as a Research Associate in Düsseldorf and Friedrichshafen. In 2020 and 2021, she was interim professor for Communication and Media Studies at Technical University Chemnitz. She completed her habilitation at the Faculty of the Arts at Heinrich Heine University in 2017 and received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2010. Since 2020, she is deputy speaker for the division Digital Communication within the German Communication Association.

Her research focuses on the digital fragmentation of society and its consequences for social and political participation. She is especially interested in differences in the use and effects of online versus offline media.

image source: Alexander Vejnovic

Sarah-Michelle Nienhaus has been a research assistant at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies III at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf since April 2021, where she previously worked as a research assistant. She also completed her studies at HHU (B.A. Social Sciences – Media, Politics, Society, M.A. Political Communication).

The topic of her master’s thesis was the framing of the Covid 19 pandemic in Bundestag debates and news reports. The topic of her dissertation project is polarization and debate style within political parties.

Lena Wilms is a research assistant in the junior research group “Deliberative Discussions on the Social Web” at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She studied political science, sociology and communication science in Düsseldorf and Budapest.

As part of her work in the “KOSMO” project, she develops and evaluates measures to improve online participation processes using AI-assisted moderation. She is particularly interested in the design of inclusive democratic online environments in the context of deliberation and participation on the internet. Her research interests also include media sociology as well as quantitative methods in the social sciences and applied statistics.

Prof. Dr. Olaf Jandura is an adjunct professor at the Department of Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, where he holds the chair of Communication and Media Studies II since October 2020.

In his research and teaching, he focuses on political communication, media content research, and reception research. In the context of DIID, he is concerned with the fragmentation of audience and market online.

Henri Mütschele is a research associate at the Chair of Communication and Media Science III at Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf. After graduating in Sociology, Politics & Economics (B.A.) at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, he completed a masters in General Rhetoric at the University of Tübingen. He also holds a master’s degree in Legal & Political Theory from University College London.
His doctoral thesis deals with deliberative argumentation patterns in online communication and their influence on internet users’ political decision-making. Thematically, the focus is on climate policy in Germany.

Dr. Carina Weinmann is a postdoc at the Institute of Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She studied Media and Communication Studies with minors in German Studies and Psychology at the University of Mannheim from 2007 to 2013 and received her PhD in 2018.
Her research is located at the intersection between communication science and media psychology. Against this background, she is primarily concerned with entertainment research, mediated deliberation, and the psychological processes surrounding political (online) communication.

Dr. Ole Kelm is a research assistant at the Institute for Social Sciences at the University Düsseldorf. He received his PhD in Communication Studies from the University Düsseldorf in 2020. Previously, he studied Political Communication at University Düsseldorf (M.A.) as well as Political Science and Communication Studies at the University Greifswald (B.A.).

His research interests include political (online) communication, consequences of media perceptions, political consumerism, and the consequences of algorithmically curated online content.

Marius Gerads has been a research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf since 2020. He studied Political Communication (Master of Arts) at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and Social Sciences and Economics (Bachelor of Science) at the University of Cologne. While studying he also completed the training at the Cologne School of Journalism for Politics and Economics. Afterwards he worked as an online journalist for the german magazine Wirtschaftswoche and is still working for the multimedia department of public-broadcasting radio station Deutschlandfunk.

His research interests include public discourse and public opinion formation under conditions of online communication, dissonant public sphere and perception of media bias. Within the DIID, his interest lies in public opinion formation and in this process the roles of established mass media (offline/online) and online-mediated interpersonal communication in this process.

Katharina Frehmann is a research associate at the department of Social Sciences at Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf. She graduated in Communication Studies, Audio-visual Publishing (B.A.) and Communication and Media Research (M.A.) at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.

In her PhD project, she investigates the usage and effects of voice assistants in everyday life. Furthermore, her research interests are journalism research and health communication.”

Since 2017, Pero Došenović has been a research assistant at the department of Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He holds a bachelor’s degree in media management from the University of Music, Theatre and Media in Hanover and a master’s degree in strategic communication from the University of Muenster. Later, he has worked there as a research assistant and coordinator of the “Center for Media Practice” with a focus on applied market and opinion research.

His main areas of interest in research and teaching are political online communication and participation as well as the public perception and the development of critical movements on digitalization. He is currently involved in the project “Meinungsmonitro Künstliche Intelligenz” [MeMo:KI], which is being realized in research partnership with the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS). MeMoKI aims at a continuous investigation of the formation and change of public opinion on artificial intelligence.

Since January 2020, Birte Keller has been a research assistant at the department of Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences and a master’s degree in Political Communication from the Heinrich Heine University.

In 2019, she worked as a research assistant with Prof. Dr. Marcinkowski, where she supported the project “Fair Artificial Intelligence Reasoning in Higher Education” as part of the Volkswagen Foundation’s project series ” Artificial Intelligence and its Impact on Tomorrow’s World”. Subsequently, in her master’s thesis she focused perceptions of artificial intelligence in higher education. She is currently involved in the project “Meinungsmonitro Künstliche Intelligenz” [MeMo:KI], which is being realized in research partnership with the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS). MeMoKI aims at a continuous investigation of the formation and change of public opinion on artificial intelligence.

Christopher Niederelz is a PhD-student at the “NRW-Forschungskolleg Online-Partizipation”. He is earning his degree under the tutelage of Prof. Dr. Christiane Eilders of the chair of communication- and media science III at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf.

He studied political science and history at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and proceeded with a Master of Arts in Democracy and Governance at Justus-Liebig-University Gießen. His MA-Thesis dealt with the explanation of the divergent outcomes of the Euro- and the Refugee Chrisis. Apart from his focus on European integration and International politics, Christopher Niederelz concentrated on the research of political extremism and the medialisation of political news and education.

At the Forschungskolleg, his research-interest revolves around the participation-strategies of interest-groups in online-participation systems.

 

Since July 2018, Anke Stoll is a research associate in the junior research group “Deliberative Discussions in the Social Web” at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She studied Communication and Media Research at the University of Münster, the University of Zürich and the University of Leipzig.

In her master thesis Anke Stoll worked on the computer-aided classification of text data using machine-learning methods. Her research interests are quantitative methods of social science and applied statistics. She is particularly interested in the automated capture and analysis of text content. As a member of the DIID she deals with the computer-aided analysis of online deliberation processes and discussions.

Dr. Marco Lünich is research associate at the Social Science Department at the University of Düsseldorf. He holds a Bachelor degree in Communication Science from the University of Erfurt and a Master in Communication Science from the Universiteit van Amsterdam. From 2014-
2017 he researched and taught at the Departement of Communication at the University of Muenster.

His research interests lie in the field of political (online-) communication, media and sports and societal consequences of digitalization and digital media. In his PhD project he focuses on the epistemological perceptions of digitalization, particulary on big data.

Since March 2018, Dominique Heinbach is a research associate in the junior research group “Deliberative Discussions in the Social Web”, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Prior to this, she was a research associate at the Department of Communication at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. She graduated in Communication Studies, Film Studies (B.A.) and Communication and Media Research (M.A.) in Mainz.

Her master’s thesis focused on the long-term effects of media brand and user comments on the persuasiveness of online news articles. Her research interests include political online participation and deliberation as well as media effects and persuasion research in the social web. In her dissertation, she investigates the short- and long-term effects of moderation on the deliberative quality and effects of public online discussions on political issues in the news media. At the DIID, she is especially interested in online deliberation processes and the (automated) analysis of online discussions.

Celine Fabienne Kampes is working as a research associate at the business studies department of the University of Applied Sciences Duesseldorf. She is doing her doctor‘s degree as part of the tandem-project ‘audience and market fragmentation online’ together with Inga Brentel from the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf. She studied communication and multimedia management at the University of Applied Siences Düsseldorf (B.A.) and technology and innovation management at the FOM Düsseldorf (M.Sc.). Within her bachelor thesis, she focused on the discrepancy between governmental data protection actions and its perception within e-administration. In her master thesis, she concentrated on requirements for certification standards within the voluntary offset market.

In her dissertation she is dedicated to the increasing influence of new advertising forms (“programmatic advertising”, “native advertising”) as well as their avoidance (ad blocking technology) on the business models and journalistic functioning of online media. Regarding the DIID, she is particularly interested in the evolving business models of online information offers and their impact on pluralism.