Dr. Lukas P. Otto

I am a senior researcher at GESIS -Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, department Computational Social Science. I am currently team leader for the team Designed Digital Data.

Previously I was I an assistant professor for Political Communication and Journalism at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research / ASCoR and a PostDoc at the Institute for Communication Psychology and Media Education, University of Koblenz-Landau, where I did my PhD (“Softening trust – Effects of Soft News Characteristics on Trust in Politicians”).

My research focuses on political communication, media psychology, and methods of communication research. More precisely I am investigating effects of digital political communication: (a) effects of negativity, incivility, and toxic talk in political communication online, as well as (b) effects of political microtargeting. I am furthermore interested in methods of communication research such as longitudinal dynamics and experience sampling designs.

My work was published in e.g. Communication Research, Communication Theory, Digital Journalism Political Communication, Journal of Communication, Journal of Media Psychology, New Media & Society. I received grants from the Ministry of Research and Education, Rhineland-Palatinate and a PhD scholarship from the German Scholarship Foundation, from Facebook Research (“A global perspective on incivility”) and the NORFACE network (project datadriven), I am a cooperation partner for the DFG-funded project “Tracking the effects of negative political communication during election campaigns in on- and offline communication environments”.

Since May 2020, I am the secretary of the Political Communication division at the International Communication Association (ICA).

I was teaching courses at the bachelor and master level in social sciences, communication science and psychology, mostly on media reception and effects, political psychology, and general introduction to communication research as well as social science methods courses.