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 holds a PhD from the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. 

His research aims to understand how new media technology, such as generative AI, influences media use, attitudes and trust. He studies political news use, political communication, trust in the media, exposure to like-minded information, and polarization and fragmentation.  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, Knudsen is the corresponding author. 

Qualifications: political communication, news use, selective exposure, affective polarization, news recommender systems, AI, trust, statistical analysis, survey experiments, quantitative content analysis, and survey research.

 

 

 

Knudsen has been in charge of the Media Survey (Medieundersøkelsen) at Nordi Media Days since 2017. 

 

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

 

 

I mainly teach courses on media use and quantitative methods. 

2026

• Gry Ane Vikanes Lavik; Ingunn Johanne Ness; Erik Knudsen et al. (2026). Do our students deserve better than distrust? How students show high integrity in their attitudes towards using AI. (external link)

2024

• Jia-Hua Jeng; Gloria Anne Babile Kasangu; Alain Dominique Starke et al. (2024). Negativity Sells? Using an LLM to Affectively Reframe News Articles in a Recommender System. (external link)
• Dag Elgesem; Erik Knudsen; Kjersti Fløttum (2024). The Impact of Climate Change on Lifestyle Journalism. (external link)

2021

• Erik Knudsen; Stefan Dahlberg; Magnus Hoem Iversen et al. (2021). How the public understands news media trust: An open-ended approach. (external link)

2023

• Damian Trilling; Erik Knudsen (2023). Drivers of News Sharing: How Context, Content, and User Features Shape Sharing Decisions on Facebook. (external link)
• Erik Knudsen; Jenny Lindholm; Lene Heiselberg et al. (2023). Affektiv polarisering i Norden – en oversikt. (external link)
• Erik Knudsen; Åsta Dyrnes Nordø; Magnus Hoem Iversen (2023). How Rally-Round-the-Flag Effects Shape Trust in the News Media: Evidence from Panel Waves before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis. (external link)
• Aksel Braanen Sterri; Erik Knudsen; Nils Hallvard Korsvoll (2023). Er det så galt om folk har mindre sex på grunn av sosiale medier?. (external link)
• Erik Knudsen; Alain Dominique Starke; Christoph Trattner (2023). Topical Preference Trumps Other Features in News Recommendation: A Conjoint Analysis on a Representative Sample from Norway. (external link)

2018

• Erik Knudsen; Mikael Poul Johannesson (2018). Beyond the Limits of Survey Experiments: How Conjoint Designs Advance Causal Inference in Political Communication Research. (external link)
• Erik Knudsen; Magnus Hoem Iversen; Eirik Vatnøy (2018). Mistillit til den andre siden : ideologisk selektiv eksponering og tillit til røde og blå medier. (external link)

2022

• Erik Knudsen (2022). Modeling news recommender systems’ conditional effects on selective exposure: evidence from two online experiments. (external link)

2020

• Mikael Poul Johannesson; Erik Knudsen (2020). Disentangling the Influence of Recommender Attributes and News-Story Attributes: A Conjoint Experiment on Exposure and Sharing Decisions on Social Networking Sites. (external link)
• Erik Knudsen (2020). Affective Polarization in Multiparty Systems? Comparing Affective Polarization Towards Voters and Parties in Norway and the United States. (external link)
• Raul Ferrer-Conill; Erik Knudsen; Corinna Lauerer et al. (2020). The visual boundaries of journalism: Native advertising and the convergence of editorial and commercial content. (external link)

2013

• K. Lefmann; Kaspar H. Klenø; Jonas Okkels Birk et al. (2013). Simulation of a suite of generic long-pulse neutron instruments to optimize the time structure of the European Spallation Source. (external link)

2016

• Erik Knudsen (2016). Når nyhetsrammer og medialisering møtes : hvordan og hvorfor ramme- og medialiseringsteori bør integreres tettere. (external link)
• Magnus Hoem Iversen; Erik Knudsen (2016). When politicians go native: The consequences of political native advertising for citizens’ trust in news. (external link)

See a complete overview of publications in NVA.

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

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).