The Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) is one of the leading and most dynamic universities in Germany and since 2012 it is one of eleven ‘Universities of Excellence’ in Germany. TUD has about 32,000 students and over 8,200 employees, 560 professors among them. As a full-curriculum university with 18 faculties in five schools it offers a broad variety of 129 degree programmes and covers a wide research spectrum.
Sven Engesser and his team will cover all aspects of populism related to the media. They will represent the field of communication within the consortium. Sven and his team will lead WP3 on narrative analysis and ICT tools. Within WP3, they will provide definitions and operationalisations of populist public narratives. Subsequently, they will conduct the Heuristic Computational Narrative Analysis and provide the theoretical underpinnings for the Machine Learning Narrative Analysis. Finally, they will conduct between-subjects online experiments to test the effects of populist narratives and counter-narratives on attitudes. Additionally, Sven and his team will contribute to other Work Packages, such as the causal analysis within Work Package 4.
Key personnel
Prof. Sven Engesser: Chair of Communication at the Institute of Media and Communication at Technische Universität Dresden since 2017. Sven received his PhD from LMU Munich in 2012. He was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Zurich and the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research on “Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century”. He also co-represented Switzerland in the Management Committee of the COST Action on “Populist Political Communication in Europe”. His fields of interest include Populism in the Media, Internet of Things, and Climate Change Communication.
Dr. Anna-Maria Schielicke: Post-doctoral research assistant at the Institute of Media and Communication at Technische Universität Dresden. In her research, she focuses on political communication, especially populism, narratives, polarization, attitudes towards minority groups, stereotyping, and hate-speech. She has more than ten years of experience in communication research methods. Currently, she works in a project analyzing the support for right-wing populist movements within a multi-wave panel study.
Teresa Lindenauer: Doctoral research assistant at the Institute of Media and Communication at Technische Universität Dresden. She has a background in cultural anthropology and sociology, especially sociological theory, theories of democracy, political sociology and political communication with a focus on (social) media and populism. The methodological experience includes the use of qualitative methods, innovative mixed-methods designs and automated content analysis.