Peter Maurer

My research interests focus on how political communication and journalism evolve in the digital media ecosystem and how they affect democracy. My research focuses on how political elites experience the mediatization of politics, features of populist communication in social media, and how actors in the public sphere use journalism and social media to shape discourses.

I am currently involved in the following research projects: Journalistic Role Performance (JRP), an international comparative project that investigates the role of (digital) journalism in contemporary democracy; Twitter and journalistic agenda setting and framing in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic; A case study about how German parties frame a natural disaster (in tweets).

I'm affiliated with the NODE research group.

I am part of the second wave of the Journalistic Role Performance project which compares the presence of different journalistic roles in the news content of television, radio, print and online media .

I am also part of the Trier Center for Language and Communication (TCLC) at Trier University where I am part of the editorial team for an interdisciplinary book project (Pattern Theory in Language and Communication, De Gruyter).

I am doctor of Media and communication studies and hold a MA in Political Science. I have earned my PhD (Dr. phil.) at Freie Universität Berlin in 2011 with a dissertation about politicians' and journalists' perceptions of media influence in political decision-making. After that, I have held postdoc and lecturer positions at the universities of Vienna, Trondheim and Trier. I got my MA from Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz and spent a year at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Strasbourg as an Erasmus student.   

Schumacher, N. F., Maurer, P., & Nuernbergk, C. (2023). Towards New Standards? Interaction Patterns of German Political Journalists in the Twittersphere. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 28(1), 257–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612211025502

Maurer, P. (2022). Populism and social media. In Ceron, A. (ed)., Elgar Encyclopedia of Technology and Politics (pp. 37-41). Elgar Publishing. 

Maurer, P. & Sharma, R. (2022). L’usage de narratifs populistes dans les tweets des candidats « contestataires » aux élections présidentielles en France (2017) et aux États-Unis (2016). Revue internationale de politique comparée, 29, 83-106. https://doi.org/10.3917/ripc.292.0083

Maurer, P., Béllanger, S. (2021). France: Parties’ Communication Strategies After the 2017 Earthquake. In: Haßler, J., Magin, M., Russmann, U., Fenoll, V. (eds) Campaigning on Facebook in the 2019 European Parliament Election. Political Campaigning and Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73851-8_6

Maurer, P., & Diehl, T. (2020). What kind of populism? Tone and targets in the Twitter discourse of French and American presidential candidates. European Journal of Communication, 35(5), 453–468. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323120909288

Jörg Matthes, Peter Maurer & Florian Arendt (2019) Consequences of Politicians’ Perceptions of the News Media, Journalism Studies, 20:3, 345-363, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2017.1377102