Activation and articulation of authoritarian attitudes
A project investigating how the media agenda and news framing shape the emergence and articulation of authoritarian attitudes. The research uses a multi-method design including …
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1 min read
Johannes Johansson
PhD Candidate in Media and Communication
Professional Summary
I am a PhD candidate in Media and Communication at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG), University of Gothenburg. My research re-examines established theories of media effects and audience behavior as temporally contingent processes, with a focus on public opinion, news framing, agenda-setting, and selective media use, drawing on computational, experimental, and mixed-methods approaches.
I did my PhD affiliated with the Varieties of Media Effects (ERC) research programme and have also worked within projects on long-term cultivation effects and the activation and articulation of authoritarian attitudes.
Before starting my PhD, I worked at the SOM Institute and the Laboratory of Opinion Research (LORE) as Deputy Chief Analyst.
Interests
Political communication
Long-term media effects
News framing and frame dynamics
Agenda-setting and issue evolution
Longitudinal and computational communication research
Selected Publications
- K. Andersen, J. Johansson, B. Johansson, & A. Shehata (2022). Maintenance and Reformation of News Repertoires: A Latent Transition Analysis. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 99(1), 237–261.
Selected Working Papers
- J. Johansson (2026). Frames in Thought and Schema Development: Hidden Sources of Stability and Change via Frame Content. ICA 2025.
- J. Johansson (2026). Media Coverage and Long-term Effect Dynamics: Attribute Agenda-setting as a Process of Recency and Cumulation. ICA 2022; In review.
Skills
PhD / Doctoral Research Courses
Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (2021, 10 hpe)
Duke & Princeton University Network; competitive application.
Location: University of Helsinki (POL-COM 2021 location)ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research — University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2021, 2nd session)
- Panel Data and Longitudinal Analysis (7 hpe)
- Maximum Likelihood Estimation II: Advanced Topics (7 hpe)
- Data Science and Text Analysis (7 hpe)
- Completed with grade A, and awarded EITM certification via Berkeley, Duke, Emory, and Princeton (Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models), under triple workload.
Critical Discourse Analysis — ECPR (2024, 4 hpe)
Interviews as Method of Data Collection — ECPR (2024, 4 hpe)
Projects
The long-term cultivation of sociotropic beliefs
A project on whether citizens who get their news from different media sources adopt and cultivate different beliefs about society. By combining a four-year panel survey with …
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1 min read
Varieties of Media Effects (VARME)
VARME studies a broader variety of long-term media effects on citizens’ perceptions of societal problems. The programme examines how media coverage and selective media use …
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1 min read
Beyond research
Outside academia, I spend time on hands-on projects in audio electronics, guitar amplifiers and pedals, homelab computing, and restoration work.
I document some of these projects at The Life DIY, a personal project log that reflects my broader interest in systems, craft, and learning by building. More broadly, these projects reflect my long-standing interest in practical problem-solving, understanding how things work, and developing solutions to concrete technical challenges.