Research of Strategic Communication
The strategic communication group investigates the role of communication in a high-choice, digitalized information environment. It has a key interest in societal issues and challenges in the realm of life sciences, such as climate, biodiversity, health, and food security and with a special focus on citizen engagement and (political) participation.
We are interested in the content of communication in a wide variety of forms and places, including (social) media, campaigns, and dialogues. We investigate how this communication comes about, is used strategically, and how it impacts individuals’ attitudes, opinions, knowledge and behaviour, collective actors like interest groups, political parties and government, as well as social practices and society at large.
Methodologically, we rely on a wide range of methods and encourage methodological diversity. We specialize in quantitative (computational) content analysis, new methods to collect and analyze digital data such as experience sampling, experimental, and survey research, as well as interventions and qualitative approaches, such as interviews, focus groups, discourse and narrative analyses.
More specifically, our research relates to four themes.
Research themes
Communication, organisation and change
We study the interplay between the construction of meaning in interaction in situated practices- including discourses, conversations, stories, dialogues and frames - and the social networks that emerge out of these interactions.
Communication and behaviour
Central to our research is improving the fundamental understanding of the origins of perceptions and behaviours in relation to life science topics, and how these psychological and communicative insights can be strategically used to create change.
Communication, contestation and cooperation
We study articulation of conflict, contestation around issues and
conditions for this contestation, and how pluralism shapes the nature of cooperation.
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