Who are you, what is your professional background and your primary research area?

I am employed as a researcher at the Department of Media Studies and Journalism. I have a master's degree in Analytical Journalism (cand.public.) from Aarhus University, and last year I defended my PhD in Media Studies and Journalism, also at AU.

My research is located at the intersection of journalism research, media studies and political communication, and I am particularly interested in what sources of news and information people use to inform themselves in a digital media landscape, and what the emergence and use of new types of news media and social media means for democracy.

In my PhD thesis, I investigated the use of alternative news media in Denmark, i.e. online news sites whose content is politically colored and often critical of established news media and the political system. In my thesis, I uncovered why parts of the population seek out this type of news content and how the use of alternative news media is related to trust in news media and politicians, populist attitudes and party choice.

In the research project I'm currently working on, I'm looking at the use of social media influencers as a source of news and political information, and the use of controversial social media platforms such as Telegram and Truth Social.

What is your affiliation with SHAPE and what is your current research project in SHAPE about?

I am affiliated with the SHAPE project “YouTube as an infrastructure for influencing citizens' beliefs and behavior,” which is led by Professor Anja Bechmann. In the project, we work with data donation as a method to gather knowledge about how Danes use a social media like YouTube. Data donation means that the participants in the research project ask for the data that YouTube stores about them and then share it with the research project (in pseudonymized form). This type of data allows for detailed analysis of user behavior on social media that we currently cannot access through other means. In addition to contributing to the development of data donation as a method - by collecting donation data on a large scale among a purposively representative sample of Danish YouTube users - we are, among other things, interested in investigating how different user patterns on YouTube are related to sociodemographic characteristics and factors such as trust in key social institutions and conspiracy mentality.

As part of the project, I am also involved in investigating what characterizes so-called 'political opinion leaders' in a digital media landscape. The term refers to citizens who are more interested in news and politics than others and therefore play a central role in relaying political information in their social networks. Previous studies of political opinion leaders have examined which news sources they use to inform themselves, but in a context where traditional news media was dominant. Here, we contribute to the field by examining what sources of information political opinion leaders draw on in a digital media reality where credible information coexists with content from biased media like Fox News and MSNBC, alternative news media, influencers, and controversial social media like Telegram and Truth Social. We also examine the extent to which political opinion leaders trust traditional news media, social media, research, and political institutions. This is relevant to understand whether they - as key gatekeepers in their social networks - play a positive or negative role for democracy. This part of the project is based on a representative survey in Denmark and the United States, which allows us to compare the role of opinion leaders in two very different media and political systems.

What impact do you expect your project to have on society or your research field?

I hope that we can methodologically contribute to the development of data donation studies as an important new source of insight into how citizens use social media, and that we can thereby contribute to a better understanding of the role social media plays in democracy. In addition, I hope that the project can contribute to qualify both research debates and societal debates about the role of new information sources in the formation of public attitudes.