Research in Media and Communicaion Studies

Media and Communications has been taught at Uppsala University for over 50 years. For almost a decade now, we have been part of Uppsala University Department of Informatics and Media. Our concentration currently includes over 20 nationally and internationally active junior and senior scholars.

Media and Communications staff conducts research across a variety of types of communication and mediation and a number of global and local contexts. While our work spans a large number of topics and approaches, it is linked by a profoundly interdisciplinary and critical approach. We see media and communication as fundamental in engineering and setting trajectories of contemporary social change as well defining conditions and challenges of human existence.

Research focus

Uppsala University Media and Communications represents a large variety of both philosophical/theoretical and empirical traditions in media, communication and journalism studies as well as in the wider social theory and research. We have particular strengths and are nationally and internationally recognised for our research on:

Critical discourse studies and discourse theory (of populism, neoliberalism, racism and uncivility, and of wider political action, communication and participation)
Existential media studies (of e.g. automation and digitalisation of lifeworlds)
Interdisciplinary journalism and media research (journalism, media accountability and ”fake news”, global journalism, media and development, criticism of media institutions, policy and regulation)
Strategic and public communication (communication in organisations/institutions, communication in/and cultural practice, digital institutionalism, digital and public diplomacy, food communication)

PhD Programme in Media and Communications

Uppsala University houses a specialised Doctoral Programme in Media and Communications run from within our concentration. Our PhD Candidates are working across a huge variety of sub-fields of media and communication studies in the context of wider critical social science research. Several of the PhD projects currently conducted in our concentration are additionally run in close collaboration with IRES – Uppsala University Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

More details about the current PhD projects conducted in Media and Communications.

Chair in Media and Communication Studies

Research and PhD Programme in Media and Communications are all led by Professor Michał Krzyżanowski who is the current Uppsala University Chair in Media and Communication Studies. Previous holders of this post include such globally recognised scholars as Professor Christian Fuchs (2010-2013; currently Chair and Director of CAMRI, University of Westminster, UK) or Professor Nico Carpentier (2016-2019; currently Professor at Charles University, Prague and President of IAMCR – the International Association for Media and Communication Research).