Dear visitor,
Thank you for stopping by!
My name is Cornelia Mothes and I'm a Professor of Journalism and Media Management at Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig. My main research interests lie in the field of political communication, media/political psychology, and journalism in digital democracies. I'm a member of the international research project Journalistic Role Performance and an editorial board member at Media and Communication. Currently, I am leading the SLM-funded project “Who Can I Believe?”, based on a simulation game on trust in the media for adults with low literacy, which is being carried out in collaboration with KF Education and Arbeit und Leben Sachsen.
I am always happy to exchange ideas, so if you would like to get in touch, please feel free to email me at c.mothes[at]macromedia.de.
Recent publications
Mothes, C. (2025). Cognitive dissonance. In A. Nai, M. Grömping, & D. Wirz (eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication (pp. 216–220). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035301447.vol1.00059
Mothes, C., & Prinzing, M. (2025). Was macht öffentlich-rechtlichen Journalismus wertvoll? Der Public Value öffentlich-rechtlicher Medien aus Sicht der Nutzerinnen und Nutzer. Media Perspektiven, 8, 1–33. https://www.ard-media.de/fileadmin/user_upload/media-perspektiven/pdf/2025/MP_8_2025_Was_macht_oeffentlich-rechtlichen_Journalismus_wertvoll.pdf
Mothes, C., Mellado, C., Boudana, S., Himma, M., Nolan, D., McIntyre, K., Kozman, C., Hallin, D. C., Amiel, P., Brin, C., Katherine Chen, Y.-N., Davydov, S., De Maio, M., Dingerkus, F., El-Ibiary, R., Frías Vázquez, M., Glück, A., Garcés-Prettel, M., Luisa Humanes, M., … Van Leuven, S. (2025). Spurring or blurring professional standards? The role of digital technology in implementing journalistic role ideals in contemporary newsrooms. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 102(1), 88–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990241246692
Mothes, C. (2025). Objektivität im Journalismus. In T. Hanitzsch, W. Loosen & A. Sehl (eds.), Handbuch Journalismusforschung (pp. 325–344). Nomos. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748932291
Ohme, J., & Mothes, C. (2025). News snacking and political learning: Changing opportunity structures of digital platform news use and political knowledge. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 22(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2023.219357
Mellado, C., & Mothes, C. (2025). Effects of journalistic roles on Chilean media users’ and journalists’ quality evaluations of news. Journalism Practice, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2025.2511117
Future presentations
Mothes, C., & Klimek, L. C. (May 2026). Transparency as media literacy: Explaining professional fact-checking as a strategy for trust-building in fragmented media environments. Annual Conference of the European Media Management Association (emma), Lappeenranta, Finland.
Mellado, C., & Mothes, C. (June/July 2026). Sub-dimensional variations in journalistic role performance: an experimental study on audience evaluations of quality and interest across political news. Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Galway, Ireland.