Young prizewinner thanks demanding professors
”While many researchers are waiting to submit contributions to international journals and conferences until after they have received their doctoral degree, I was encouraged to have a go at it early on”, says Claes de Vreese, 29, winner of the Nils Klim Prize.
Last week was rather special for Danish media researcher Claes de Vreese. On Wednesday he was informed that he had been awarded the Nils Klim Prize worth NOK 250,000 by the Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund, and the news was immediately followed by the birth of his second child. When we catch him on the phone he is still up in the sky.
”It is absolutely marvellous!”, he laughs, before he clears his throat and points out how wonderful it is that the Holberg Prize and Nils Klim Prize were established in order to have a greater focus on research in the field of the humanities, social science, law and theology.
He himself carries out his research in the juncture between political science and media studies, and marked himself out internationally with his research contribution in political communication. He holds a permanent position as Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam.
High productivity in political communication
Claes de Vreese earned his Bachelors degree at the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen, but became early interested in combining the humanistic methods of approach with a more social science-oriented communication research.
”The reason was, among other things, that seven years ago I participated in a project group that examined the quality development of news communication at the Dutch television channel that corresponds to your NRK. We were in the middle of the election campaign and it was incredibly interesting to follow the various processes put to life. I became especially engaged with the relationship between politicians and journalists, and both parties’ concept of the general public”, Mr de Vreese explains. Since then he has published a total of 17 articles in ten different international refereed journals on political communication.
On his list of publications we can also find two books, five book chapters and more than 35 papers delivered at international conferences, in addition to a large amount of research reports, policy papers and guest lectures. He has received five prizes for best paper at various international conferences.
”Have you been incredibly productive?”
”I have been so lucky that I could be part of a very exciting environment at The Amsterdam School of Communication Research. Since 1997 they have attracted scholars and research fellows from the whole world to develop competence in comparative international media research. We have been encouraged all the time to actively participate in the international arena and submit contributions to journals and conferences. In the world of science it is an enormous advantage if you have published several articles as a scholarship holding research fellow”, Mr de Vreese says and thinks that here we can witness a change in attitude and culture.
”Previously there used to be a trend that people worked on their doctoral dissertation for four or five years before they felt themselves ready to submit something to important journals. I think it is healthy to be forced to try earlier. It is very informative to receive feedback from refereed international journals”.
Analyses the media coverage of EU elections
At the moment Mr de Vreese is involved in a comprehensive project in which he and two of his European colleagues will examine the media coverage of the election to the European Parliament held in June this year. In addition to the news communication the analysis, which includes 25 countries, will be based on a poll among the candidates.
”We can find several good national analyses of political communication and news communication, but it is often difficult to use them for comparing conditions across national borders”, Mr de Vreese says.
As there are only few people who have first-hand information in political issues and the proportion of uncertain voters is increasing, according to Mr de Vreese the communication factors become more and more important, in spite of the fact that there are still several other conditions that play a role in shaping people’s political views.
The young media researcher also has another impending research project in connection with the upcoming Danish referendum on the new EU constitution. This project includes a larger panel survey in the form of repeated questioning of a representative sample of the population, content analysis of various media as well as qualitative studies based on so called focus groups. He is now working on to include the Netherlands and the UK in the research as they have also decided to hold a referendum.
Claes de Vreese will visit Bergen during the first week of December, at the same time when the Holberg Prize will be presented to Julia Kristeva.