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RUC researcher receives grant for project on counterpublics

Roskilde University’s (RUC) Department for Communication and Arts with the latest grant has three large research projects investigating the formation of publics in today’s mediated society. The three projects are ‘Data Publics’, ‘Cultural Publics’ and the latest addition ‘Alternative Media and Ideological Counterpublics’, making RUC a growing knowledge centre in research on publics and journalism.

On Thursday the 10th of December it was announced that associate professor Eva Mayerhöffer had just received nearly 5 million DKK from the Carlsberg Foundation for a new research project focusing role of hyper-partisan alternative media in the digital public sphere. This is the third project in three years at RUC that brings theoretical and empirical focus on publics and the important role of journalism, but also other media in the formation of publics and what means for democracy.

The first publics project was awarded to Ida Willig in 2019 and is a historic study that traces the ‘cultural publics’ found in the opinion- and people’s pages from 1908 to 2018 in order to understand how the ‘cultural public sphere’ looks today and how it might have changed over the years. The following year Jannie Møller-Hartley was awarded funds for the ‘DataPublics’ project.

Read also: About the project "Datafied News Media – Datafied Publics?"

“I think it is so exciting that we are becoming perhaps one of the largest publics and media environments in the world – to make a bit of a bold estimate. The increasing number of public projects makes it a very vibrant and inspiring research environment to work in, because we can share knowledge and ideas. In my experience that also makes both the research process and the research itself better and I look forward to the many cross-collaboration in the following years when all three projects make progress,” says DataPublics-PI and associate professor, Jannie Møller Hartley, and emphasises how she also hopes for more international collaboration as well with the many researchers around the world who share and interests in media and publics.

Join the publics research at RUC

As part of the new project on alternative media and ideological counterpublics there are also two new positions opening up, both a PhD and a Post.doc.. Applications are accepted until the 26th of January.