Damian Trilling is a full professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and holds the Chair for Journalism Studies.
Working in a humanities department, coming from a social science background, and having a strong affinity with computational methods, I combine and integrate multiple perspectives in my work. Yet, one question stays central: How are citizens keeping up and engage with news and current affairs in the current media environment – and which role do journalists, news media, social media, and technical innovations play in this process?
News consumption and sharing
What types of news are people using – and whom? Do people still watch television news, and what role do online media play? At the beginning of my career, I mainly relied on survey research to investigate such questions. Nowadays, I typically use digital trace data, for example so-called data donations, in which people donate their browser histories to us for scientific research.
This line of research includes news of all kind of news-related information, including low- and high-quality news, opinionated and factual content, and even mis- and disinformation.
Furthermore, I have worked extensively on news sharing. This includes understanding what makes news “shareworthy” and large-scale analyses of news sharing on Facebook.
Human and algorithmic feedback loops in news production and dissemination
News sharing and news consumption in today’s media environment cannot be understood without considering re-inforcing processes: content that becomes popular just because it is already popular; increasingly personalized news diets based on earlier clicks; the influence of audience metrics on content production and dissemination. Often, the term filter bubble is used in such contexts (even though I think it’s quite misleading). You can read more about my work in this area on the website of my project NEWSFLOWS.
Computational Methods
One of my main interests is the application and development of innovative methods.
I am one of the founding associate editors of the diamond open-access journal Computational Communication Research and treasurer of the foundation governing the journal. Also, I co-authored a book on Computational Analysis of Communication.
Amongst other things, I am interested in the use of state-of-the art machine learning techniques, developing methods to identify news events and to trace them between different types of media, developing tools for field experiments with recommender systems and for data donation.
Please visit also my personal website at https://damiantrilling.net/
