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
25 publications
Digital media and digital media systems
Laia Castro, Sina Blassnig (2024) | Book chapterUser Perceptions of News Recommender Systems and Trust in Media Outlets: A Five-Country Study
Sina Blassnig, Eliza Mitova, Edina Strikovic, Aleksandra Urman, Claes de Vreese, Anikó Hannák, Frank Esser, Journalism Studies (2024) | Journal articleOpportunity structures for user acceptance of news recommender systems (NRS): A multi-country survey study of relationships between individual-level factors and evaluations of NRS
Edina Strikovic, Sina Blassnig, Eliza Mitova, Aleksandra Urman, Frank Esser, Claes de Vreese, New Media & Society (2024) | Journal articleSelecting, avoiding, disconnecting: a focus group study of people’s strategies for dealing with information abundance in the contexts of news, entertainment, and personal communication
Sophia C. Volk, Anne Schulz, Sina Blassnig, Sarah Marschlich, Minh Hao Nguyen, Nadine Strauß, Information, Communication & Society (2024) | Journal articleA Balancing Act: How Media Professionals Perceive the Implementation of News Recommender Systems
Sina Blassnig, Edina Strikovic, Eliza Mitova, Aleksandra Urman, Anikó Hannák, Claes de Vreese, Frank Esser, Digital Journalism (2024) | Journal articleExploring users’ desire for transparency and control in news recommender systems: A five-nation study
Eliza Mitova, Sina Blassnig, Edina Strikovic, Aleksandra Urman, Claes de Vreese, Frank Esser, Journalism (2023) | Journal articleWhen Worlds Collide: Journalistic, Market, and Tech Logics in the Adoption of News Recommender Systems
Eliza Mitova, Sina Blassnig, Edina Strikovic, Aleksandra Urman, Claes de Vreese, Frank Esser, Journalism Studies (2023) | Journal articleGoogling Referendum Campaigns: Analyzing Online Search Patterns Regarding Swiss Direct-Democratic Votes
Sina Blassnig, Eliza Mitova, Nico Pfiffner, Michael V. Reiss, Media and Communication (2023) | Journal articleNews recommender systems: a programmatic research review
Eliza Mitova, Sina Blassnig, Edina Strikovic, Aleksandra Urman, Aniko Hannak, Claes H. de Vreese, Frank Esser, Annals of the International Communication Association (2023) | Journal articlePopulism and Social Media
Sina Blassnig (2022) | Book chapter