Francis Alpers

Francis Alpers has been a research assistant at the Department of Public Relations and Technical Communication at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies (IfMK) at the Ilmenau University of Technology since July 2021. 

From 2013 to 2018, he completed his Bachelor's degree in Communication and Media Studies with a focus on media practice at the University of Bremen. He also gained practical experience in the fields of online marketing and search engine optimization through part-time jobs and internships during his bachelor's degree.

In October 2018, he transferred to the University of Erfurt for his M.A. in Health Communication. He completed his Master's degree in May 2021.

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Francis Alpers' research interests lie at the intersection of health, crisis and science communication. His previous research activities have focused primarily on the presentation and impact of media content.

In his dissertation, Francis Alpers deals with the representation and role of scientists in the context of media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing specifically on the media construction of their scientific expertise. Using a comparative content analysis as part of the DECIPHER project, he compares these results in a large number of Western European and US online news media.

Schwarz, A. & Alpers, F. (2023).The mediated societal threat and efficacy in public health crises – A seven country study of COVID-19 from a risk communication perspective. Crisis 7 conference, Göteborg, 06.10.2023.

Schwarz, A.; Alpers, F. & Wagner-Olfermann, E. U. (2022). The global study of COVID-19 news coverage: A meta-analysis of scope, methodological quality, theoretical lenses, and cross-national findings. 9th European Communication Conference, Aarhus, 20.10.2022. 

Andreas Schwarz, Francis Alpers, Elisabeth Wagner-Olfermann & Audra Diers-Lawson (2023) The Global Study of COVID News: Scope, Findings, and Implications of Quantitative Content Analyses of the COVID-19 News Coverage in the First Two Years of the Pandemic, Health Communication. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2226932