Prof. Dr. Stephanie Geise

Vita

Stephanie Geise researches how people perceive and process political media content via images and texts. She focuses on the question of how multimodal media messages – such as traditional news, election advertising or fake news online – affect political thought and action. In various research projects, she has combined survey methods with innovative, computer-based tracking methods (e.g. eye tracking, automated emotion recognition). After holding the Chair of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on digital communication since the summer semester of 2021, she was appointed as a full professor at the University of Bremen in the summer semester of 2022.

She is on leave from her position as a research assistant and head of the research project “Remixing Multimodal News Reception” at the Institute of Communication Science at Münster University (own position, funded by the DFG) for the replacement. From 2017 to 2019, she led a research project funded by the Friede-Springer Foundation in which she investigated the effects of media protest reporting on political attitudes and the willingness to participate.

Previously, Stephanie Geise was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on empirical communication research and methods at the University of Erfurt (2010-2016). In her habituation, which she successfully defended before the Departmental Council of the University of Erfurt in summer 2015, she worked on innovative methods of empirical analysis of visual communication and obtained the Venia Legendi for the subject of media and communication studies.

In her dissertation at the University of Hohenheim, she investigated the reception and impact of multimodal political information using the example of election advertising with the help of eye tracking (2006-2010); the work was awarded the DGPuK dissertation prize in 2012.

Her studies were also based on an interdisciplinary perspective: After completing a degree in business administration in Essen and working in strategic marketing/market research at Aral Ag & Co. KG (1998-2002), she studied sociology, communication science and art history at the University of Augsburg as a second degree (2001-2005).

Research Focus

Political communication, visual communication, digital communication, methods of empirical communication research, in particular computer-based observation methods; process of media reception and media impact: political participation; political protest (protest movements)

Memberships

• International Communication Association (ICA)
• European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA)
• German Communication Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, DGPuK)