Katharina Hajek (LMU Munich & UdK Berlin, Germany): "Constructing a Climate of Compliance – Understanding Resistance to Pro-Environmental Messages"

• Datum: 29. May 2024 – 29. May 2024
• Time: 16:15
• Street: Linzer Str 4
• Location: ZeMKI
• Room: 60.070

Does every restriction of freedom lead to the same resistance? In the lecture, Katharina V. Hajek will provide insights into a project funded by the Bavarian Institute for Innovation for Digital Transformation (bidt) on the measurability of reactance in the age of ‘wicked problems’ and focus on the question of how different types of reactance processing can lead to different reactance behavior. She will introduce the new Reactance Process Model on which the research is based and provide insights into the quantitative and qualitative data of an experiment (SoSci Survey panel, 2×2, N = 546) on reactance responses to climate change messages in infographics on Instagram. Finally, the presentation discusses how these findings can help to improve communication about climate change and to better understand and investigate reactance in different media contexts and publics.

PDF to download

Bio:
At the interface between social psychology and communication sciences, Katharina Hajek researches how individual freedoms and their restrictions shape actions and influence political motivations. In particular, she examines the effects of these influences on different public spheres and especially on social media. In addition to resistance dynamics, she is also interested in emotion psychology, in particular the question of ‘Be-longing in Wicked Times’. She is currently working on her doctorate at the Berlin University of the Arts on the topic of reactance as an emotional process. She was previously funded by the Stiftung der Wirtschaft (sdw) and is now working as a project member in a bidt project at the LMU Munich. Parallel to her dissertation, she was a scientific advisor to a start-up that combines data science and emotion psychology. She was also spokesperson for the DGPuK’s Network for Young Political Communicators (NaPoKo). In 2022, she was a Research Fellow at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, & Society at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to her academic work, she worked for six years as a communications manager in the field of mental health at a non-profit foundation.