Dr. Katherine M. Engelke wins University of Münster’s dissertation award
(07.12.2018) At this year’s “summa cum laude” ceremony at the Münster City Castle, Katherine M. Engelke won this year’s dissertation award for her dissertation “The Depiction of Trust, Distrust, and Trust Problems within the Context of Digitalization in the Media”. The dissertation award is endowed with 3500 Euros.
Trust, mistrust and trust problems play an important role in journalism. However, not much is known about the media’s depiction of these three trust dimensions. In a longitudinal analysis (2002 – 2015), Katherine M. Engelke’s dissertation examines these three trust dimensions comprehensively and systematically for the first time, using the example of the context of digitalization in order to do so.
Based on an interdisciplinary approach to the three trust dimensions as well as on the concept of framing, the concept of trust dimension frames is developed deductively and tested empirically in order to discover the actors, causes, judgements, and recommended actions depicted in connection to these three trust dimensions.
A quantitative content analysis of 2091 news articles in 5 German media outlets (Spiegel, Spiegel Online, taz, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Kölner Express) shows that the depiction is a common but differentiated phenomenon. The news coverage on the three trust dimensions increases over the course of time. Furthermore, the uncovered frames have different contentual tendencies, depending on the trust dimension that is made salient and the framed issue.
Katherine M. Engelke did her doctorate from 2014 until 2017 in the DFG Research Training Group “Trust and Communication in a Digitized World”. Today, she works as a Research Associate at the Department of Communication. Her interdisciplinary work was supervised by Prof. Bernd Blöbaum and Prof. Gerhard Schewe. Her dissertation was published with Nomos and can be found here.
The advancement of young scholars is a central strategic goal of the WWU Münster. Altogether, 14 dissertation prizes were awarded to excellent graduates from 14 faculties of the WWU. The prize money goes towards supporting the winners’ research.
Further information on the dissertation award can be found here.