Thomas Kirchmair is a predoctoral researcher in the ERC project Digital Hate: Perpetrators, Audiences, and (Dis)Empowered Targets since October 2023. Before that, he was already involved in DIGIHATE as a research assistant since February 2023. Prior, he was engaged in various projects, located at the University of Vienna at the Department of Communication and at the Faculty of Computer Science, at the Austrian National Library, and at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ACDH-CH).

After his Master studies in Journalism and Communication Studies (MA, 2023) and German Philology (BA, 2020), Thomas is currently also writing his master's thesis in Digital Humanities. His research interests include, among others, media effects, methods of digital text analysis, multivariate statistics, and the public discourse.

Awards & Acknowledgements

• 2024, June
  Top Paper Award for the paper "Four eyes, two truths: Explaining heterogeneity in perceived severity of digital hate against immigrants", Information Systems Division, ICA annual convention, Gold Coast, Australia (co-authors: Kevin Koban & Jörg Matthes).

• 2023, September
  Best Poster Award for the paper "Grumpiness ambivalently relates to negative and positive emotions in ironic Austrian German text data", Language, Data and Knowledge 2023 Conference, Vienna, Austria (as a co-author of Andreas Baumann, Nicole Bausch, Juliane Benson, Sarah Bloos, Nikoletta Jablonczay, & Emilie Sitter).

• 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, Phelia Weiß, Maryam Khaleghipour, Melanie Saumer, & Rinat Meerson).