Dr. Julian Unkel

Hi, I’m Julian Unkel! I’m currently interim professor for Digitalization and the Public at the Institute of Communication Science at the University of Jena. Usually, I work as a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Media and Communication at LMU Munich. In summer 2021, I have also substituted the junior professorship for Computational Social Science at the Center for Data Methods, University of Konstanz. I have received my doctoral degree (Dr. rer. soc.) in January 2019 from LMU Munich, and have before obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in communication.

In my research, I focus on the effects of the digital transformation on media users, content, and producers. In the last years, I have investigated questions such as: How is political information perceived, selected, and processed in algorithmically curated online media? What types of content do users encounter when they inform themselves with search engines during election campaigns? And how can public service broadcasters adapt to changes in the digital media landscape?

To address these questions, I combine computational approaches including web scraping, agent-based testing, and automated content analysis with traditional quantitative communication research paradigms (e.g., surveys, experiments). My goal ist to improve the accessibility and sustainability of computational and coding-based research practices by contributing to open-source research software development, integrating computational methods into my teaching curricula, and publishing data, code, and materials of my projects in public repositories.