DySCo team member Stefan Geiß has succesfully completed his PhD with an oral exam this Wednesday, 22nd of October. The title of his dissertation is »Die Aufmerksamkeitsspanne der Öffentlichkeit. Eine Studie zur Dauer und Intensität von Meinungsbildungsprozessen« [The attention span of the public. A study on the duration and intensity of opinion formation processes].
In his thesis, Stefan Geiß explores the question how long mass media and the public typically deal with political issues and which factors influence the development of issue attention and opinion formation activities. He develops a theoretical modell which proposes that recipients judge the salience of an issue based on heuristic cues within media coverage and adapt the intensity of their opinion formation accordingly. The study offers fundamental insights about the interplay between media thematization, and individual and public opinion formation by means of a sophisticated methdological design that combines content analysis and survey data. The work was supervised by Hans Mathias Kepplinger, Christian Schemer served as the second referee.
The DySCo team congratulates Stefan Geiß for his excellent work!