4DB846C4-80D9-4F50-B0F7-DF978B5FB26AI’m a Postdoctoral researcher in Political Communication and Media Effects at the University Carlos III of Madrid.

My research project involves protest media coverage and its impact on public perceptions about dissenting groups as well as on the legitimacy of protest as a political tool. I investigate the ways in which digital technologies may have altered the relationships between social movements, the media, and the citizen discourse.

Previously I have worked at the Institute for Communication Pedagogy and Media Psychology (IKM) at the University of Koblenz-Landau, in Germany. I was part of the research project “Reciprocal relations between populist radical-right attitudes and political information behavior.”

I got my PhD in Communication in 2019 from the University of California, Davis. My dissertation is titled “Communicating Dissent, Manufacturing Deviance: Effects of Media Portrayals of Protest in the Social Media Era.” It addresses how public articulations of dissent and protest attracting various forms of media coverage contribute to shape people’s perceptions and attitudes toward dissenting groups. I content-analyze press coverage to explore how mainstream media discourses on collective action have evolved as a product of changes in journalistic standards and practices brought by digital media. I also employ experimental methods to examine the effects of such discourses on public opinion, as well as to ascertain the role of new media technologies in shaping those effects.

I am currently teaching two upper division courses, one on Social Journalism and another one on Data Journalism at the Journalism Department at UC3M. In past years I have taught several communication and methods courses, among them: Empirical Methods, Intro to Social Media, Intro to Mass Media, Intro to Media Entertainment, Political Communication, and Public Speaking.

Prior to my PhD, I did an Interdisciplinary Masters in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media (CSIM) with an emphasis in Cognition, Technology, and Integration at Pompeu Fabra University, in Barcelona, Spain. I also hold a BA in Audiovisual Communication from the University of Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain.