People

Meet the research team.

Co-directors

Mona Krewel

Dr Mona Krewel is a lecturer in the political science programme at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, as well as an External Fellow of the Mannheim Center for European Social Research (MZES) (Germany). Before joining VUW, she held positions at Cornell University (USA) and the University of Mannheim (Germany). Her research focuses on the relation between media and politics and in particular on the role of social media in election campaigns and dis- and misinformation on social media. She is part of the team which conducts the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), as well as a PI of the New Zealand Election Study (NZES). Besides that, she is the Principal Investigator of the New Zealand Social Media Study (NZSMS) which is conducted by the ISPRL. She is also the lead editor of the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties (JEPOP) and an editorial board member of the journal Electoral Studies.

Karl Löfgren

Dr Karl Löfgren is an Associate Professor in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington. He has in the past has held academic positions with Copenhagen University (Denmark), Malmö University (Sweden), and Roskilde University (Denmark). He has been teaching in a number of subfields of political science including digital politics and administration, public administration/management, public policy, and European Union studies. Current research interests include digital government and service delivery, democratic audit of new forms of local democracy, utilisation of knowledge in policy, and policy implementation/organisational changes/reforms in public sector organisations. He has been involved in a number of national and international research projects/networks including being prime investigator for a Nordic research network (2009-2012) and two European COST-actions. He is currently the book review editor for Information Polity (IOS Press) and a member of the editorial boards of a number of academic journals.

Michael Daubs

Dr Michael S. Daubs is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Victoria University of Wellington. His research has investigated topics including mobile apps and the open Web, mediatisation and social movements, and dis- and misinformation as threats to democracy. Currently, he is researching the role of information communication technologies and online platforms in the spread of misinformation and white extremist ideologies. He is the co-author (with Peter A. Thompson) of “International Regulatory Frameworks for Online Content”, a research report commissioned by the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, and co-editor (with Vincent Manzerolle) of Mobile and Ubiquitous Media: Critical and Internal Perspectives from Peter Lang.