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Erik Knudsen
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Erik Knudsen

Position

Communication Science and Media Use Research

Affiliation

E-mail
erik.knudsen@uib.no
Phone number
+47 97676173
Visitor address
Fosswinckelsgt. 6
5007 Bergen
Room: 617
Postal address
P.O. Box 7802
NO-5020 Bergen
Norway

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Erik Knudsen

Position

Communication Science and Media Use Research

Affiliation

Research groups

Research

Erik Knudsen is professor in communication science within media use research. He leads a work package at the MediaFutures Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation and is PI of the project NEWSREC – The Double-edged Sword of News Recommenders’ Impact on Democracy (awarded by the the highly competitive program Research projects for young talents by the Research Council of Norway). He did his postdoc at the Digital Social Science Core Facility (DIGSSCORE) and hold a PhD from the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. Much of his research innvolves methodological innovation and explores effects of political news use, political communication, trust in journalism, exposure to like-minded information, and polarization and fragmentation. He is founder of the Norwegian Journalism Panel and the interdisciplinary Research Group for Political Behaviour, Democracy and Communication (PADKOM) at DIGSSCORE and has lead the development process of the DATADONOR tool for safely collecting digital trace data of news use. His work has appeared in Journal of Communication, Political Communication, Journalism, Digital Journalism, Journalism Studies, Scandinavian Political Studies, and other peer-reviewed journals.  

Higlighted publications: 

Knudsen, Erik (2022) “Modeling News Recommender Systems’ Conditional Effects on Selective Exposure: Evidence from Two Online Experiments.” Journal of Communication, published online ahead of print. The journal is the flagship journal of the International Communication Association (ICA) and is the most prestigious journal in the field of communication research. Single authored. Open access. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac047 

Knudsen, Erik ⓡ Nordø, Åsta Dyrnes & Iversen, Magnus Hoem (in press) “How Rally-Round-the-Flag Effects Shape Trust in the News Media: Evidence From Panel Waves Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis.” Political Communication, published online ahead of print. The journal is one of the most prestigious journals in the field. The “ⓡ” symbol indicates that the author order is randomized. Shared first author, I am corresponding author. 

Qualifications: political communication, news use, selective exposure, affective polarization, news recommender systems, journalism, framing, agenda setting, media effects, news values, media logics and mediatisation of politics, quantitative content analysis, experimental research design, public opinion and survey research.

 

 

 

Outreach

See Knudsen's TED-talk here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3qHJC5LwJQ

 

See Knudsen's presentation at Forsker Grand Prix here:

https://vimeo.com/136707016

 

 

Teaching

Master level course:

2013: Course leader, supervisor, and teacher for MEVI317: News media, agenda, framing, scandals, sources and media effects

Bachelor level course:

2013 and 2014: Supervisor and teacher in MEVI102: Media, audience, media use and opinion formation

2012: Teacher for MEVI100: Introduction to media and communication

 

Publications
2021
2023
2024
2016
2015
2013
2020
2017
2022
2025
2014
2026
2018

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

For an updated list of my publications please see my Google scholar profile.

Projects

NEWSREC – The Double-edged Sword of News Recommenders’ Impact on Democracy (project number 324835)

The NEWSREC project was awarded by the highly competitive program Research projects for young talents by the Research Council of Norway.

NEWSREC deals directly with one of the most pressing questions facing the news media today: What are the precise conditions under which news recommender technology are for the better or the worse for the democratic role of the news media? We focus on one of the most heavily debated consequences of news recommenders: individuals' exposure to and sharing of like-minded news (selective exposure and sharing).

Evidence of news recommenders’ dystopian democratic threats (e.g., Filter Bubbles) and of their opportunities to counter such threats remain largely anecdotal. Despite an increasing scholarly attention to news recommender systems, the precise conditions under which they are a threat to or an opportunity for democracy remain a puzzle. NEWSREC addresses this puzzle head-on by offering a radically new perspective: We aim to shift the scholarly attention from the dominant perspective of uncovering and describing whether the current news recommender systems (such as those used by Facebook and Twitter) lead to Filter Bubbles to understanding the conditions under which news recommender systems do so, given that they are designed for that purpose. By focusing on this counterfactual (i.e., what has not happened but could or might under differing conditions), we radically shift the responsibility for the democratic implications of recommender systems from the technology itself to the decisions surrounding the implementation and design of the technology. We mobilize this novel perspective by developing the first news recommender that is tailor-made to pioneer research on the conditions under which news recommenders amplify or reduce selective exposure and sharing. 

The NEWSREC project will: (A) develop a framework for understanding when and how news recommenders can increase or decrease selective exposure and sharing, and delineate the ethical considerations pertaining to designing recommenders to do so; (B) develop the first news recommender equipped with factors that increase or decrease selective exposure and sharing; (C) use a randomized field experiment to test this recommender to gain a precise understanding of when and how news recommenders increase or decrease selective exposure and sharing.

NEWREC is lead by Erik Knudsen (University of Bergen). The research team conists of Damian Trilling (University of Amsterdam) and Christoph Trattner (University of Bergen, Director of MediaFutures Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation). NEWSREC's scientific advisory board consists of Natali Helberger (University of Amsterdam), Magdalena Wojcieszak (University of California, Davis), and Wouter van Atteveld (Vrie University of Amsterdam).