Prof. Dr. Teresa K. Naab

Prof. Dr. Teresa K. Naab studied media management at the University of Music, Drama, and Media in Hannover. She then completed her doctorate there on habits and rituals of television use. She habilitated in 2020 with a cumulative thesis on media use in new media environments at the University of Augsburg. She worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Journalism and Communication Research in Hannover and as an academic advisor at the Institute for Media, Knowledge, and Communication in Augsburg. In the meantime, a research stay took her to the University of Georgia, USA, and she held temporary professorships at LMU Munich and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In February 2022, she was appointed to the professorship for Digital Communication at the University of Mannheim. She is Vice Dean for International Affairs at the Faculty of Philosophy.

Her research focuses on the use and effects of digital communication. She is particularly interested in the role digital communication plays in democratic processes, how people can act competently in the digital world, and innovative methods for researching digital communication. Teresa Naab examines interactions and discourse norms in online discussions (including in the DFG-funded project “Mutual Sanctioning among Users of Comment Sections”) and how users deal with problematic online content. Another important aspect of her work is how people can develop media literacy and a reflective approach to digital platforms, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. In addition, Teresa Naab addresses the question of how users reinforce their own attitudes when they actively communicate on social media (including in the DFG-funded project “Self and Feedback Effects in Social Media: What Effects Do Political Statements Have on the Users Who Express Them?”).

To strengthen the transfer between science and social practice, Teresa Naab is engaged in exchanges with partners from the media industry, providers of digital applications, and civil society actors. She teaches bachelor's and master's courses in communication studies. Among other things, she teaches on issues relating to the use of digital media, the production of media content by non-institutionalized users, and methods of empirical social research. Eventually, she  is currently preparing an interactive textbook with online resources for the design and implementation of in-situ studies in communication studies.