Pieter Maeseele

Pieter Maeseele (PhD Ghent University) is Research Professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Antwerp (Belgium), where he is a member of the research group Media, Policy & Culture of the Department of Communication Studies. He was also affiliated to the research groups Society & Environment (UA) and Centre for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS - UGent). He has previously held positions at Ghent University and Erasmus University College Brussels. He is vice-chair of the IAMCR Environment, Science and Risk Communication Working Group, a founding member of the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA), and a member of the ECREA Science and Environment Section, the Belgian STS Network, the Rhetoric Society of Europe (RSE), and the editorial board of the ISI-indexed journal Science Communication.

As media sociologist, he is specialized in social and political issues relating to science, technology and the environment in the media, with a particular focus on the ideological nature of discourses and processes of politicization and depoliticization. By focusing on the reflexive circuit between frame sponsors, media discourses and audience discourses, the aim is to draw conclusions not only on the contribution of public and media discourses to democratic debate and democratic citizenship, but also on how to communicate more effectively from the perspective of democratic politics. Furthermore, he holds expertise in putting up mediamonitors on important social issues, to track the (re)production and circulation of meaning in media discourses during certain periods and within certain geographic areas, such as the current mediamonitor on 'the energy debate' in a range of Dutch- and French-language newspapers in Belgium.

A full list of publications can be consulted here: Pieter Maeseele