Prof. Dr. Emilija Gagrčin
CV
Emilija Gagrčin is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on Media, Society and the Good Life at the University of Bremen. Her research explores how people experience, interpret, and collectively negotiate their relationship to society in the context of multiple crises, and what role media play in this process. Central to her work is examination of social, normative, and infrastructural conditions these shape this relationship, and how these relate to citizens’ political participation.
From 2025 to 2026, Emilija Gagrčin was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, where she led the project RESDEM – Resilient Democracies. Using local disputes over wind energy expansion in Baden-Württemberg as a case study, she examined how polarization as a communicative process shapes democratic participation in local energy conflicts. Although the project funding has officially concluded, data collection and analysis are still ongoing.
From 2023 to 2025, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim (Chair of Digital Media, Prof. Dr. Teresa Naab) and an associated researcher in the ERC project PREPARE (PI Prof. Dr. Hallvard Moe) at the University of Bergen.
She completed her PhD from 2020 to 2023 at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin, supervised by Prof. Dr. Martin Emmer (Freie Universität Berlin) and Prof. Dr. Daniel Lane (UC Santa Barbara). As a member of the Digital Citizenship research group, her dissertation, titled “Social Media and Citizens’ Role in Politics: Exploring Relational and Contextual Aspects of Citizenship Norms,” examined political participation and citizenship norms on social media platforms.
Research Interests
- Political Communication
- Media Use and Public Connection
- Social Norms
- Democratic Theory
- Qualitative and Mixed-Methods Research
Current Research Projects
- Instant Messengers as Civic Infrastructure (2023–ongoing): This project, in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Olga Pasitselska (University of Groningen) and Dr. Kilian Buehling (University of Tübingen), examines group communication in residential buildings and solidarity networks in Germany and Israel.
- iFAM – Intergenerational Families & Algorithmic Media (2025–2026): Funded by the Norwegian Media Authority, this project investigates intergenerational learning about algorithmic media within families.
Memberships
- International Communication Association (ICA)
- European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA)
- German Communication Association (DGPuK)
Affiliations
Emilija Gagrčin is affiliated with the Digital Political Inequality Lab at the University of California in Santa Barbara (USA), the Weizenbaum Panel research unit at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin, and the ERC project group PREPARE at the University of Bergen (Norway).
Awards
- In 2025, Emilija Gagrčin was recognised by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (DKNVS) with the Early Career Researcher Award in the category of Social Sciences and Humanities.
- In 2013, Emilija Gagrčin was awarded the DAAD Prize for outstanding achievements by international students.
Engagement
Since 2024, Emilija Gagrčin has served as Chair of the Management Team of the Young Scholars Network of ECREA (YECREA), where she advances various initiatives to support early-career researchers. Previously, she served as an Early-Career Scholar representative on the management team of the Political Communication Section of ECREA. Learn more: https://yecrea.eu/
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2953-1871
Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZKK9HX4AAAAJ
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilija-gagrcin/
Contact: Linzerstr. 4, 28359 Bremen, Phone , Email: gagrcin@uni-bremen.de
Most recent publications (Source: ORCID)
- Gagrin, Emilija (2026). Permanently online, temporarily abroad: Digital media use during secondary school exchange. Intercultura Quarterly. Fondazione Intercultura ets
https://media.suub.uni-bremen.de/handle/elib/25122 - Who should act, when, and where? The SCOPE framework for establishing responsibility and legitimacy in digital citizenship. Communication Theory
https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaf029 - Algorithm Literacy: A Short Conceptual Overview
https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/7xz2t_v1 - Chat groups as local civic infrastructure: A case study of “Solidary neighborhood help” Telegram groups during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. New Media & Society
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251349426 - Do good chat groups make good neighbors? Continuity and change of norms in neighbor relations under digital co-presence. Journal of Communication
https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqag013 - Algorithmic media use and algorithm literacy: An integrative literature review. New Media & Society
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241291137 - Emilija Gagrv cin and Roland Toth and Nadja Schaetz and Teresa K Naab and Martin Emmer (2025). Perceptions and implications of data harms to individuals and society
https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/69816/ - Algorithm dependency in platformized news use. New Media & Society
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231193093 - Your social ties, your personal public sphere, your responsibility: How users construe a sense of personal responsibility for intervention against uncivil comments on Facebook. New Media & Society
https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221117499 - Daniel S Lane and Hannah Overbye-Thompson and Emilija Gagrv cin (2024). The story of social media: Evolving news coverage of social media in American politics, 2006–2021. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication : JCMC. 29 (1). 1--14. Oxford. Oxford University Press
https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/65893/
