Key research areas at Section of Media Studies are:

• Media, popular culture and everyday life, including the role of media in the negotiation of cultural value and the boundaries of high/popular culture. We are interested in the production of popular culture and the wider circulation of images, values, attitudes and cultural practices among media users and audiences, including cultural phenomena such as celebrities, fan communities, children and young people’s media practices, ageing and lifestyle.
   
• News and journalism across platforms, including the interplay of news media and social media in cultural production and political opinion making. We are interested in changing conceptions of media professionals and citizens in the creation, circulation and consumption of media content and visual communication on a day-to-day basis and in times of crisis. In our research we engage in topics spanning across the hard/soft news divide and in media content within and beyond traditional genre conventions. 

• Media, politics and democracy, including current changes to political communication, the public sphere and democracy, such as the challenges and opportunities pertaining to the empowerment and fragmentation of audiences, polarization and radicalization of opinion, and the rethinking of media content and journalism in view of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. We are interested in the role of media in political movements and political mobilization and in the construction and legitimation of authority, expertise and knowledge. We collect comparative insights about magnitude of these challenges and opportunities.

• Media industries, policy and regulation, including institutional and organizational perspectives. We study the media’s changing technological, institutional and financial conditions and how such changed value chains influence media production, distribution and use. This research aims to contribute to current media policy debates and media policy-making, which increasingly requires evidence-based research.

Projects

EXPOSING: The Public Value of Socio-Mediated Scandals in the Digital Age
Funding: Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF2)
Project period: 1 September 2024 to 28 February 2028
Contact: Nete Nørgaard Kristensen

INVENT: European Inventory of Societal Values of Culture as a Basis for Inclusive Cultural Policies
Funding: H2020
Project period: 1 February 2020 to 31 July 2023
Contact: Nete Nørgaard Kristensen

PastForward: The Political Uses of the Past in Digital Discourses about Nordic Futures
Funding: NordForsk/NOS-HS
Project period: 1 December 2023 to 30 November 2026
Contact: Manuel Menke

Monograph fellowships

Cultural Journalism in the Digital Age 
Funding: Carlsberg Monograph Fellowship 
Project period: 1 September 2023 to 31 december 2024
Contact: Nete Nørgaard Kristensen 

Picture or It Didn’t Happen: Constructing and Contesting Visual Evidence During Conflicts
Funding: Carlsberg Monograph Fellowship 
Project period: 1 September 2024 to 30 August 2025
Contact: Mette Mortensen