Media Effects in Motion: Temporal Processes and Contextual Dynamics

May 27, 2026 · 2 min read
projects

This, my PhD dissertation project, develops a process-oriented account of media effects, focusing on how media influence unfolds over time through the interaction between exposure, content, and citizens’ evolving cognitive schemas. Rather than treating agenda-setting and framing as separate or competing perspectives, the dissertation integrates them within a broader theory of schema development: media can shape which attributes become salient, how those attributes are interpreted, and whether new information is assimilated, resisted, or contributes to deeper cognitive change. This perspective highlights media effects as recursive and temporally conditioned processes, where influence may be strongest when issues are novel, unstable, or reactivated, while later stability may reflect earlier effects embedded in consolidated beliefs.

Empirically, the dissertation consists of four original studies. The first examines stability and change in news consumption repertoires; the second investigates how news frames evolve, interact, and compete over time; the third links dynamic media content to a five-wave panel survey to study long-term agenda-setting and schema development during the COVID-19 pandemic; and the fourth uses framing experiments to test mechanisms of assimilation and accommodation under varying conditions of content, repetition, sentiment, and issue type. Together, the studies combine longitudinal panel data, experimental designs, manual content analysis, and computational text analysis to explain how media effects vary across time, contexts, individuals, and stages of belief formation.

Included publications

Media Effects Public Opinion Longitudinal Dynamics
Johannes Johansson
Authors
Johannes Johansson
PhD Candidate in Media and Communication
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 Media Effects in Motion, 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.

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