ASCoR

🎉 We congratulate Professor @claesdevreese.bsky.social on receiving the Stevin Prize 2026. On 7 October, the Minister of Education, Culture and Science presented the annual Spinoza and Stevin Prizes at the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague.

🎉 We are pleased to #welcome 🎉 our new #PhD candidate, Iris Withuis! Iris conducts NWO-funded research on how people perceive and make sense of interactions with digital humans, and how perceptions of humanness shape emotional, relational and moral responses.

🎓 #PhDDefence We congratulate Liza Keessen, on the successful defence of her #PhD thesis, “Me-Time in the Digital Age: How Digital Technology Can Undermine and Support Emerging Adults’ Need for Solitude”!

🚨 #Jobalert! We are looking for two ambitious #PhD Researchers for the four-year project “Agents of doubt: A novel framework for understanding the impact of synthetic content on adolescents’ knowledge formation.” The PhD positions are part of the Youth and Media Entertainment Program Group.

🚨 #Jobalert We are looking for a PhD Candidate for the project "Democratic moral craftmanship under pressure: How politicians and administrators can effectively communicate democratic and moral norms in relation to moral dilemmas and political crises". 📅Deadline: 5 October 2026 🔗Read More 👇

Today marks the end of @theoaraujo.bsky.social's term as Scientific Director of ASCoR. On behalf of all ASCoR researchers and staff, we would like to thank Theo for everything he has done for ASCoR over the past four years.

🎉We #congratulate ASCoR researchers Priska Breves, Saurabh Khanna, and Felicia Loecherbach on being awarded prestigious Veni grants by the NWO (Dutch Research Council). Read more: tinyurl.com/mwaf372t

Saurabh Khanna: Invisible Conflicts Ethiopia's civil war cost more lives than the Russia-Ukraine war, yet got far less coverage. This project analyses ten years of conflict and news data across 86 languages to reveal why some wars stay hidden, delivering a public tool to identify them in real time.

🎉We #congratulate ASCoR researchers Priska Breves, Saurabh Khanna, and Felicia Loecherbach on being awarded prestigious Veni grants by the NWO (Dutch Research Council). Read more: tinyurl.com/mwaf372t

We are pleased to welcome 🎉 our new postdoctoral researcher, Erik van Haeringen. He joined ASCoR as a research engineer and postdoctoral researcher. As a postdoctoral researcher, he works on the cAlibrate (calibratedtrust.eu) project, which investigates trust in conversational generative AI.

We are immensely proud to share that ASCoR researcher and former Director @claesdevreese.bsky.social has been awarded the 2026 Stevin Prize, the highest distinction in the Netherlands for researchers who have achieved exceptional societal impact through the application of scientific knowledge.

🎉 We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2026 #McQuail Award: #Congratulations to prof. Anne Bartsch (Leipzig University), receiving the award for her paper Epistemic authority in the digital public sphere - an integrative conceptual framework and research agenda (doi.org/10.1093/ct/q...)

🎉#Congratulations to Cynthia Dekker and Susanne Baumgartner, winners of the ASCoR Baschwitz Awards 2025! Each year, the Baschwitz Article of the Year and the Young Scholar Award are presented during the Departmental Meeting of Communication Science.

🏆 Susanne Baumgartner received the ASCoR Baschwitz Faculty Award for the article: Baumgartner, S. E. (2025). On the stabilization of media effects after repeated exposure: consequences for media effects research. Communication Theory. doi.org/10.1093/ct/q...

🎉#Congratulations to Cynthia Dekker and Susanne Baumgartner, winners of the ASCoR Baschwitz Awards 2025! Each year, the Baschwitz Article of the Year and the Young Scholar Award are presented during the Departmental Meeting of Communication Science.

#Congratulations 🎉 ASCoR researcher @hannescools.bsky.social received a 2-year grant from @sidnfonds.bsky.social to study how news organisations can break free from Big Tech using open-source AI.

The project "Digital Autonomy that Fits" is led by @aimediademlab.bsky.social with Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Waag Future Lab, De Correspondent, and Follow the Money. For the University of Amsterdam, the researchers include Natali Helberger, Laurens Naudts & Agustin Ferrari Braun.

🎰 Increasing amounts of gambling content in our social media feeds? 📺 Tonight at 9:15 PM on NPO 2: ‘Gokkers op je tijdlijn’ This episode explores how online gambling content is increasingly appearing in our timelines and the impact it may have on young people.

🚨 #Jobalert Within the AuthentiMark consortium, we currently have three PhD vacancies. The project is funded by an NWA/KIC grant from NWO (the Dutch Research Council). Application deadline for all three positions: 15 May.

2. AuthentiMark: Protecting and Empowering Citizens Against Digital Fraud, supervised by Guda van Noort, Bart Jacobs, Sandra Jacobs, and Tom Dobber. More information: werkenbij.uva.nl/vacatures/pr...

🚨 #Jobalert Within the AuthentiMark consortium, we currently have three PhD vacancies. The project is funded by an NWA/KIC grant from NWO (the Dutch Research Council). Application deadline for all three positions: 15 May.

🚨 #Jobalert We are looking for a #PhD Candidate for the project "Democratic moral craftmanship and media". In this project, you examine the role of Dutch media in shaping, maintaining, and debating the democratic moral craftsmanship of politicians and administrators.

🚨#Jobalert In this project, you will create a longitudinal dataset containing the media and web consumption patterns of individuals, linking content data with its consumers, and bridging between meso-level public debate and micro-level individual behavior and attitudes.