On April 19 2017, the Political Communication division organized a Master Class with Natalie Stroud (Ph.D., Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) at the University of Amsterdam. Natalie Stroud is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Assistant Director of Research at the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Master Class focused on media use and its effects in a changing media landscape. With this Master Class, the Political Communication division of NeFCA aimed to bring together young scholars from the Dutch and Flemish research community and meet with an international, inspiring, and well-known scholar in political communication.

The afternoon started with a talk by Tom Powell and colleagues (University of Amsterdam) about the contribution of news visuals to selective exposure. After this first talk, Karolin Soontjens (University of Antwerp) gave a talk about the varying effects of news coverage on different dimensions of citizens’ personal agenda. This presentation was followed by Hanna Wolf (University of Antwerp) who discussed in the effects of repeated exposure to numerical messages. The afternoon was ended with a presentation by Tim Groot Kormelink (Free University) with the title “Feeling News: A video-ethnography of everyday news use”. We can look back on a very exciting morning. Natalie Stroud gave important feedback, which was very inspiring for all the participants.

Above all, we would like to thank Natalie Stroud and the young scholars for making the master class very successful.

The organizing team, Ruud Wouters, Luzia Helfer, and Sanne Kruikemeier