Science

Journalism is an ethics-based political science field. Like medicine or law, journalism is very practice-oriented. At the same time, academic research and critical monitoring of the media industry and the communication and media research landscape are important.

As a journalist and media scientist, I focus on analyzes of foreign reporting:
Who chooses news and how and why? How do distortions and bias develop and occur in foreign reporting and who can be interested in them?
How do mass media deal with stereotypes? How strongly does PR and propaganda influence foreign reporting? Under which conditions do foreign correspondents and reporters work? How are global correspondent networks structured and why? What power does war propaganda have? Does the nasty “mainstream news industry” really exist? What about the internal and external freedom of the press related to foreign coverage? And what about independent investigations? 

I researched and taught intensively related to these questions, theory-led, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, as well as to current aspects such as the questionable representation of Africa in mass media as well as to historical backgrounds such as the influence of secret services on the mass media coverage during the cold war.

During my time as scientific director I transformed and internationalized the Leipzig Institute for Journalism Research e.V. (IPJ) to the European Center for Journalism and Communication Research( EIJC) between 2014 and 2016.  Among this, I established cooperation projects for international comparative research and studies with the University of Ghent/ Belgium and the University of Westminster in London/ UK, in the course of which three dissertation projects were launched.
In 2018, the first – in the field of media law – was successfully completed. The two other dissertations on the work of supervisory boards in European public service broadcasters and on international journalist networks are still in progress.

Between 2004 and 2014, hundreds of journalism and communication science students visited my seminars and workshops, for example at the European Institute for journalism and communication research, at the university of Leipzig, at the university of Minsk or at the Leipzig school of media. Till 2018, about 50 graduation papers were created under my supervision. During my academic work I taught methodical research, foreign and narrative journalism / reportage as well as empirical research methods. Please find some closer information on this website.