Melanie Saumer, BA BA MSc
Predoctoral Researcher
Project: YouCount
Währinger Straße 29 (R. 7.43), 1090 Vienna
✆ +43-1-4277-49397
✉ melanie.saumer@univie.ac.at
Consultation: Based upon prior agreement
Melanie Saumer is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna since September 2021. Before that, she worked at the department as a teaching assistant within the AdMe research group for four years.
She studied Communication Science at the University of Vienna (MSc, 2021), and holds a BA in Political Science (University of Vienna, 2020) and a BA in Journalism and Communication Science (University of Vienna, 2019).
She is currently working within the project "YouCount", funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union. Her research interests include media psychology, (political) paticipation through Citizen Science, and how anti-LGBTQIA+ digital hate speech affects bystanders and targets.
Awards & Acknowledgements
- 2023, August
Second Place Top Paper Award for the paper "The state of evidence in digital hate research: An umbrella review", Communication Theory and Methodology Division, Open Paper Competition, AEJMC annual convention, Washington, D.C., USA (as a co-author of Jörg Matthes, Kevin Koban, Stephanie Bührer, Thomas Kirchmair, Phelia Weiß, Maryam Khaleghipour, & Rinat Meerson).
- 2022, November
Research Award (1st place, together with Kevin Koban), Department of Communication, University of Vienna, for the project Online hostility to go: An eye-tracking study on the impact of the reception situation on bystanders' processing of anti-LGBTQIA+ social media comments.
- Top Faculty Award for the paper "Do journalists differentiate between Muslims and Islamist terrorists? A content analysis of terrorism news coverage", Journalism Studies Division, ICA annual convention, Washington, D.C., USA (co-authors: Christian von Sikorski, Desirée Schmuck, Jörg Matthes, Claudia Klobasa, Helena Knupfer).