SJ (Svenja) Schäfer

Svenja Schäfer obtained her doctoral degree from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2014. Afterward, she joined the Political Communication Research Group at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna. Since 2024, she has been working as an Assistant Professor in the Strategic Communication group.

Her research focuses on how people use media to learn about politics and how they monitor their own learning processes. In previous projects, she examined how social media serve as a source of political information and shape attitudes and public opinion. Other projects have explored news disengagement and possible solutions to address news avoidance.

Currently, her work investigates how people use generative AI (GenAI) as an information source and how interventions can promote more responsible and reflective engagement with GenAI tools.