Dr. Dennis Steffan

About

Dennis Steffan is an associated researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute. His research focuses on visual and multimodal political communication from a comparative perspective. At the Weizenbaum Institute, he investigates (1) visual frame-building processes in social and legacy media during election campaigns across different political and media systems, and (2) the influence of multimodal framing in online campaign coverage on voters’ candidate evaluations and preferences. 

Dennis draws on a broad methodological repertoire that includes both quantitative and qualitative approaches. His work employs content analyses, surveys, and experimental designs within cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. He integrates AI tools to examine emerging forms of visual political communication in online environments and applies advanced statistical techniques tailored to the complexities of multimodal and comparative research.  

Before joining the Weizenbaum Institute, Dennis held interim professorships at the Free University of Berlin and Friedrich Schiller University Jena and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at TU Dortmund University. He has also been a visiting scholar at Indiana University Bloomington (The Media School) and a guest lecturer at the University of Oslo (Department of Media and Communication). He earned his PhD from the Free University of Berlin in 2020.

Research Group: Dynamics of Digital Mobilization