Position
Assistant Professor
Christian is a tenure-track assistant professor of political psychology at University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU). His research focusses on political psychology, media effects and political communication. Currently, he conducts third-party funded projects on the effects of political polarization and depolarization and on social media influencers (SMI). Particularly, he is interested in political messages of SMI and how they affect followers' political beliefs, attitudes, knowledge and behaviors.
Between April 2017 and September 2018 Christian was a visiting professor of media psychology at University of Koblenz-Landau. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication (April 2015 - March 2019), University of Vienna, Austria (AdME research group led by Prof. Jörg Matthes). Christian received a PhD in Media and Mass Communication from German Sport University, Cologne (Germany) and was a visiting researcher at New York University (NYU) and Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
His articles appeared in, e.g., Communication Research, Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Sport Communication, Journalism, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Media Psychology, Nature Communications, Nature Scientific Data, Political Communication, Political Psychology, and The International Journal of Press/Politics.
Christian teaches courses on media effects, political communication, strategic communication, and research methods.
In the summer semester 2023 Christian is on research sabbatical.