Sina Julia Blassnig
Prof. Dr.
sina.blassnig@unifr.ch
+41 26 300 8393
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7815-0186
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Professor,
Institute for Digital Communication and Media Innovation
PER 21 bu. A314
Bd de Pérolles 90
1700 Fribourg
Journalism Studies: digital journalism, journalism and new technology (e.g. news recommender systems, AI), media innovation, news use, user perceptions of new technology, media logic(s), role of audiences (e.g., user comments, news sharing)
Political communication: (digital) communication of political actors, social media, political news coverage, populism, hate speech/ incivility
International comparative media research, international comparison of media systems
Biography
Sina Blassnig is full professor of digital communication and datafication at the Department of Communication and Media Research (DCM) at the University of Fribourg. She is also Director of the Institute for Digital Communication and Media Innovation (IDCMI) in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (FHGR). In teaching, she is mainly responsible for the Joint Master's degree program "Digital Communication and Creative Media Production", which is offered in cooperation with the FHGR.
Sina Blassnig studied communication science and political science at the University of Zurich, where she also completed her doctorate on the topic of populist online communication. She was then a senior research and teaching associate at the Department for Communication Science and Media Research (IKMZ) at the University of Zurich. She was also a visiting scholar at the Department of Communication and Journalims, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2019) and at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and the AI, Media and Democracy Lab at the University of Amsterdam (2023).
Her research interests lie in the areas of digital communication, digital journalism and media innovation, political communication, media use, and media systems in a comparative perspective. In her current research, Sina Blassnig focuses in particular on the use of new technologies and artificial intelligence in the production and distribution of media content and how this affects the role of the audience and the usage behavior of citizens. She also researches how political actors use digital platforms. Her research places particular emphasis on an international comparative perspective and the integration of supply and demand perspectives in communication science.
Research and publications
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Publications
27 publications
Digital media and digital media systems
Laia Castro, Sina Blassnig (2024) | Book chapterPopulism and Social Media
Sina Blassnig (2022) | Book chapterPOPULISM AND SOCIAL MEDIA , in The Populism Interviews: A Dialogue with Leading Experts
Blassnig, S. (2022), ISBN: 9781000641967 9781032168104 | Book chapterPopulism and Social Media Popularity , in Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media
Sina Blassnig, Nicole Ernst, Sven Engesser, Frank Esser (2019), ISBN: 9780429466007 | Book chapterDimensions, Speakers, and Targets , in Communicating Populism
Sina Blassnig, Patricia Rodi, Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Kinga Adamczewska, Lilia Raycheva, Sven Engesser, Frank Esser (2019) | Book chapterEvent-, politics-, and audience-driven news: A comparison of populism in European media coverage in 2016 and 2017 , in Communicating Populism: Comparing Actor Perceptions, Media Coverage, and Effects on Citizens in Europe
Esser, F. and St?pi?ska, A. and Peká?ek, O. and Seddone, A. and Papathanassopoulos, S. and Peicheva, D. and Milojevic, A. and Blassnig, S. and Engesser, S. (2019), ISBN: 9780429687853 9781138392724 | Book chapter -
Research projects
10003942 - Generative Visual AI in Swiss Journalism: Exploring Production and Audience Perspectives Through a Mixed-Methods Design
Status: OngoingStart 01.09.2025 End 31.08.2029 Funding SNSF Open project sheet Generative Artificial intelligence (AI) – technology that produces new content like text, images, audio, or video based on training data in response to written prompts (Arguedas & Simon, 2023) – is increasingly permeating various sectors of society and providing powerful tools for news media production in journalism (e.g., Cools & Diakopoulos, 2024). Rapid advancements in AI technologies, especially in generating visual content from data visualizations to photorealistic images, have generated both excitement and concern. Media professionals, policymakers, and scholars predict that AI-generated visuals will become more prevalent, potentially transforming journalistic practices, audience engagement, and visual communication (Paik et al., 2023; Thomson et al., 2024; Thomson & Thomas, 2023). Yet, empirical research on the use and impact of generative visual AI in journalism remains limited. Industry reports and academic studies emphasize the need for comprehensive research on how these technologies are used, perceived, and their broader implications for visual news production and consumption (Thomson et al., 2024; Thurman et al., 2024). Against this backdrop, this project aims to assess how generative visual AI-technologies are integrated into journalistic news production, characterize AI-generated visual content in journalism, and examine how media professionals and news audiences perceive and evaluate these technologies and visuals. By integrating theoretical perspectives from journalism studies and visual communication, drawing on news media logics and a texto-material understanding of visuals, and combining production and audience perspectives, the project offers a comprehensive exploration of this emerging field. Our multilingual project uses a sequential mixed-methods research design, combining qualitative and quantitative methods with participatory visual techniques. The project has two main work packages. WPI starts with qualitative visual diaries of media professionals from selected Swiss news outlets, identifying types, topics, and contexts of AI-generated visuals in use. Expert interviews follow, exploring opportunities, challenges, and shifts in journalistic practices. WPII involves focus groups with news users from Switzerland’s three major language regions to assess audience perceptions of AI-generated visuals in journalism. Both work packages conclude with a quantitative survey of media professionals and news users respectively across the language regions, providing broader, more representative insights and testing hypotheses deducted in the qualitative parts. This design allows findings from each stage to inform subsequent ones, offering a comprehensive view of generative AI in Swiss visual journalism from production and audience perspectives. The project’s expected results will significantly contribute to the timely yet under-researched field of generative visual AI in journalism and visual communication research, at theoretical, methodological, and empirical levels. Through a multi- and mixed-method approach, we will provide in-depth empirical evidence on the use of generative visual AI in Swiss newsrooms across different organizational types, characteristics of AI-generated content, and both media professionals’ and audiences’ perceptions of such technologies and visuals. This offers a holistic view of how generative visual AI is integrated into contemporary Swiss journalism. Additionally, our findings will guide media professionals, policymakers, and educators on the ethical and effective implementation of generative visual AI, addressing risks and maximizing benefits for both news production and consumption. In addition to scientific contributions, we will prioritize disseminating our findings to the public, including a panel discussion and workshop bringing together media professionals from Switzerland’s three major language regions and leading scholars. Evaluation der Medienförderungsmassnahme ‘Gratis-Abos für Jugendliche’ in den Kantonen Freiburg und Genf
Status: OngoingCrowding Out? Auswirkungen des SRG-Onlineangebots auf die Medienlandschaft
Status: Completed