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PhD students and doctoral projects

The department has the following current doctoral student projects.

Dennis Andersson

His dissertation focuses on how media effects affect people's perceptions of societal problems and is related to JMG's research project Variations of Media Effects (VARME).

Salma Bouchafra

Her dissertation project focuses on the visual representations of (in)security and the discursive construction of threat and fear in right-wing populist communication on social media.

Elena Broda

Her research interests include misinformation (and related concepts such as disinformation and fake news), political knowledge, attitude formation, audience studies, media effects and mixed methods.

Sherwin Chua

He defended his dissertation on September 29 2023 with the thesis News Publishers’ Innovation of Practices Amid Platform Dominance. His dissertation project investigates the development and implementation of digital reader-revenue innovations among news publishers.

You can download his thesis here in the university's electronic archive.

Read more about Sherwin Chuas project here.
Read more about Sherwin Chua here.

Hugo Ekström

Hugo Ekström is a PhD student at JMG since 2023. He received his master’s degree in Digital Media and Society from Uppsala University where he has also been a research assistant at the Department of Informatics and Media.

Hugo Ekström’s research interest mainly concerns political communication and the mainstreaming of radical and extreme right-wing populism in the new media landscape.

Erik Espeland

Erik Espeland is a PhD student at JMG since 2023. He already has a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in political communication, both from JMG.

Erik Espeland's research interest mainly concerns news consumption and news avoidance in the modern media landscape

Sara Ivarsson

This dissertation project focuses on how communication is interpreted, negotiated and understood as an idea in the process of constructing a new Government Agency in Sweden, as well as how these ideas impact the organization at large. Read more about Communication as idea and practice in a Swedish Government Agency.

Johannes Johansson

In his dissertation project Media messages, frames and the structuring of perceptions Johannes Johansson is investigating the influence of media on public opinion and citizen’s perceptions of society. It is a well-studied relationship that still remains under-explained and is constantly reinvented. For instance, the question as to how it is that individual appreciation of their reality differ so wildly without clear differences in their personal experience is often thought to depend on media influence. The research project takes place as part of the larger research programme Varieties of Media effects (VARME) and is focused on Framing, and Agenda-setting theory. By help of content-analysis, long-term survey studies, a longitudinal experiment and an event study the project aims at tracking incremental developments and dynamics in transference of media framing of societal issues to individual perceptions. Analysis within the project make heavy use of computational social science.

Read more about Johannes Johansson here.

Sofia Johansson

Her research interest centers around crisis communication and disinformation. She is specifically interested in how the socio-technological structures of social media platforms can amplify disinformation messages during a crisis, the narrative techniques used to spread disinformation during a crisis and the potential effects of such techniques on beliefs and attitudes.

Ane Mestvedthagen

Ane Mestvedthagen is a PhD student at JMG since 2023.

Amanda Ramsälv

Her doctoral project approaches journalism with its news reporting as an authoritative knowledge-producing institution. It investigates what form of knowledge news is. Read more about Amanda Ramsälv's dissertation work News as knowledge.

Gregor Retteneger

His thesis is looking into conspiracy theories and political dogwhistles in social media and it is part of the GRIPES project and WASP-HS.

Pavel Rodin

He defended his dissertation on September 29 2023 with the thesis Voices in the Arena. A participation-Centred Study of Multivocal Risk and Crisis Communication on Social Media. In his dissertation, he examines communication about health issues on social media.

You can download the thesis here in the university´s electronical archive.

Maria Sjögren

Her dissertation regards citizen dialogues as communicative and social practices. Read more about Maria Sjögren's project Discursive dimensions of public participation.