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Amsterdam School of Communication Research / ASCoR ASCoR

Dr. F. (Felicia) Loecherbach

Assistant Professor Political Communication and Journalism
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
CW : Political Communication & Journalism
Area of expertise: News diversity, computational communication, data donation, recommender systems
Visiting address
  • Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
Postal address
Contact details
Social media
  • Profile

    Felicia Loecherbach is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam. She is also a Faculty Research Affiliate at the Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMaP) at New York University, where she held a position as Postdoctoral Fellow from 2022 to 2024. She obtained her PhD in Communication Science from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2023, with a dissertation titled “Diversity of News Consumption in a Digital Information Environment.”

    Felicia has been a fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin and is a network member of OPINION COST Action. Since 2024, she has served as a board member of the Digital Communication Methods Lab at the University of Amsterdam and as Secretary of the ICA Computational Methods Division (2025–2027). She is a regular instructor at international training programs, including GESIS, and co-organizer of events such as the ICA hackathon Opening up Communication Science.

    In her research and teaching, Felicia focuses on:

    • News consumption, diversity, and recommender systems in digital media environments
    • Data donations and participant-centered approaches to digital trace data
    • Algorithmic and multimodal content analysis, especially on platforms such as TikTok and WhatsApp
    • Ethics and sustainability of (generative) AI methods in computational communication science

    Research expertise

    • Computational communication science
    • Political communication
    • Data donation and digital trace data
    • News diversity and recommender systems
    • Multimodal content analysis
    • Ethics of AI and digital methods
    • Open science and research infrastructure
    • TikTok, WhatsApp, and visual social media

    Media appearances

  • Research

    Research methods

    • (Automated) content analysis (text, multimodal)
    • Digital data collection (data donation, tracking)
    • Algorithm auditing
    • Application design for research (experiments)
    • Survey and data linkeage (content + digital data)

    Current research projects

    • RIGHTS (TDCC)

    Developing ethical, legal, and technical frameworks for responsibly collecting and sharing sensitive digital trace data while ensuring FAIR principles and national research infrastructure compatibility.

    • TikTok use of adolescents (together with project AWESoMe)

    Analyzing TikTok data from adolescents obtained via data donations to study the effects of traditional value content—especially (Wo)Manosphere narratives—on political attitudes using multimodal and survey-linked approaches.

    • RESPOND (EU Horizon)

    Conducting large-scale computational analysis of social media discourse on political corruption across nine countries to assess risks and resilience in digital democracies.

    • NKO x YouTube Data Donation

    Combining YouTube viewing data from a custom donation app with national survey data (NKO) to study political information exposure and personalized content consumption in the Netherlands.

    • WhatsApp News Use Study

    Exploring political news consumption on WhatsApp through participant-centered data donations, focusing on content sharing behaviors and the platform’s role in private information ecosystems.

    • Politics on Wikipedia

    Investigating how political information is curated on Wikipedia, focusing on multilingual coverage, editorial dynamics before elections, and implications for representation and public knowledge access.

    Research grants & honours

    • KHMW Keetje Hodshon Prize (2025) – National dissertation prize in the humanities (Netherlands)
    • VU Faculty Dissertation Award (2024)
    • TDCC NWO Grant – RIGHTS (2025) – Co-applicant, €200,000 for ethical digital trace data infrastructure; project coordinator
    • Teaching Innovation Grant – Responsible AI (2024), University of Amsterdam, €2,500
    • Digital Communication Methods Lab Awards (2020, 2024) – Funding for WhatsApp and mobile news diet studies
    • Winner – NPO Hackathon on Diversity-Aware Recommender Systems (2020)
  • Teaching
    • Big Data and Automated Content Analysis (Research Master)
    • Big Data II (Research Master)
    • Using R for Data Wrangling, Analysis, and Visualization (Research Master)
    • Applied Digital Citizen Science (Master)
    • Data Journalism (Master – Erasmus Mundus)
    • Digital Society Research Project (Bachelor – Minor)

    PhD supervision

    • Youri Coudron – Financial Challenges Facing Journalism (with Mark Boukes, Anke Wonneberger)
    • Liv van Roozendaal – Generative AI in Our Daily Lives: Unraveling the Trust-and-Use Calibration Dynamics (with Theo Araujo, Anne Kroon, Floor Fiers)
    • Brian Douwenga – Democracy by Design: How App Characteristics Shape Youth Political Worldviews (with Tom Dobbers, Linda Bos, Bert Bakker)
  • Publications

    2025

    • van Hoof, M., Trilling, D., Meppelink, C., Möller, J., & Loecherbach, F. (2025). Googling politics? Comparing five computational methods to identify political and news-related searches from web browser histories. Communication Methods and Measures, 19(1), 63-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2024.2363776 [details]

    2024

    • Hase, V., Ausloos, J., Boeschoten, L., Pfiffner, N., Janssen, H., Araujo, T., Carrière, T., de Vreese, C., Haßler, J., Loecherbach, F., Kmetty, Z., Möller, J., Ohme, J., Schmidbauer, E., Struminskaya, B., Trilling, D., Welbers, K., & Haim, M. (2024). Fulfilling data access obligations: How could (and should) platforms facilitate data donation studies? Internet Policy Review, 13(3). https://doi.org/10.14763/2024.3.1793 [details]
    • Otto, L. P., Loecherbach, F., & Vliegenthart, R. (2024). Linkage analysis revised–linking digital traces and survey data. Communication Methods and Measures, 18, 186-204. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2023.2257595
    • Welbers, K., Loecherbach, F., Lin, Z., & Trilling, D. (2024). Anything you would like to share: Evaluating a data donation application in a survey and field study. Computational Communication Research, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.5117/CCR2024.2.5.WELB [details]

    2023

    • Moeller, J., Loecherbach, F., Möller, J., & Helberger, N. (2023). Out of control? Using interactive testing to understand user agency in news recommendation systems. In R. G. Lawrence, & P. M. Napoli (Eds.), News Quality in the Digital Age (pp. 117-133). (Media and Power). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257998-11 [details]

    2022

    2021

    2020

    2019

    • Sullivan, E., Bountouridis, D., Harambam, J., Najafian, S., Loecherbach, F., Makhortykh, M., Kelen, D., Wilkinson, D., Graus, D., & Tintarev, N. (2019). Reading news with a purpose: Explaining user profiles for self-actualization. In ACM UMAP '19 adjunct: adjunct publication of the 27th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization : June 9-12, 2019, Larnaca, Cyprus (pp. 241-245). The Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3314183.3323456 [details]

    2018

    • Löcherbach, F., & Trilling, D. (2018). 3bij3: A framework for testing effects of recommender systems on news exposure. In IEEE 14th International Conference on eScience: proceedings : 29 October-1 November 2018, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (pp. 350-351). IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/eScience.2018.00093 [details]
    • Trilling, D., van de Velde, B., Kroon, A. C., Löcherbach, F., Araujo, T., Strycharz, J., Raats, T., de Klerk, L., & Jonkman, J. G. F. (2018). INCA: Infrastructure for content analysis. In IEEE 14th International Conference on eScience: proceedings : 29 October-1 November 2018, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (pp. 329-330). IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/eScience.2018.00078 [details]

    2023

    • van Hoof, M., Trilling, D. C., Meppelink, C. S., Möller, J. E., & Loecherbach, F. (2023). Googling politics? The computational identification of political and news-related searches from web browser histories. Paper presented at International Conference on Computational Social Science, Copenhagen, Denmark.

    2022

    • Araujo, T., Ausloos, J., van Atteveldt, W., Loecherbach, F., Moeller, J., Ohme, J., Trilling, D., van de Velde, B., de Vreese, C., & Welbers, K. (2022). OSD2F: An Open-Source Data Donation Framework. Paper presented at the 72nd annual conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), 26-30 May 2022, Paris, France. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xjk6t
    • Loecherbach, F., Moeller, J., Trilling, D., & van Atteveldt, W. (2022). Don't miss the long tail: Website classification to identify local and niche news. Paper presented at the 72nd annual conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), 26-30 May 2022, Paris, France.
    • Loecherbach, F., Trilling, D., Moeller, J., & van Atteveldt, W. (2022). What is news? Applying institutionalized and audience-centered perspectives to the study of news diversity in digital trace data. Paper presented at Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap.

    2020

    • Loecherbach, F., Moeller, J., Trilling, D., & van Atteveldt, W. (2020). Unified framework of media diversity: A systematic literature review. Paper presented at International Communication Association (ICA), Gold Coast, Australia.
    • Loecherbach, F., Moeller, J., Trilling, D., van Atteveldt, W., & Helberger, N. (2020). Perceived control and satisfaction in news recommender systems. Paper presented at Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap 2020.
    • Loecherbach, F., Moeller, J., Trilling, D., van Atteveldt, W., & Helberger, N. (2020). Perceived control and satisfaction in news recommender systems. Poster session presented at International Communication Association (ICA), Gold Coast, Australia.
    • van Atteveldt, W., Kroon, A., Loecherbach, F., Steijaert, M., Strycharz, J., Trilling, D., van der Velden, M., & Welbers, K. (2020). Standardized research compendiums: Making open and transparent science fun and easy. Paper presented at International Communication Association (ICA), Gold Coast, Australia.

    2019

    • Kroon, A. C., Trilling, D., Fokkens, A., Loecherbach, F., Moeller, J., van der Velden, M. A. C. G., & van Atteveldt, W. (2019). Improving automated content analysis with news-specific word embeddings for medium-resourced languages. Paper presented at International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2), Amsterdam, Netherlands.
    • Kroon, A., Trilling, D., Fokkens, A., Loecherbach, F., Moeller, J., van Atteveldt, W., & van der Velden, M. (2019). Deriving semantics from Dutch media corpora: The Amsterdam word embedding model. Abstract from Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap, Nijmegen.
    • Loecherbach, F., & Trilling, D. (2019). 3bij3 - a framework for testing effects of recommender systems on news exposure. Paper presented at International Communication Association (ICA), Washington, United States.
    • Loecherbach, F., & Trilling, D. (2019). 3bij3 -- A framework for testing effects of recommender systems on news exposure. Abstract from Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap, Nijmegen.
    • Loecherbach, F., & Trilling, D. (2019). It takes three to tango: The interplay of political press releases, Social media and newspapers. Paper presented at International Communication Association (ICA), Washington, United States.
    • Trilling, D., van Atteveldt, W., Loecherbach, F., & Möller, J. E. (2019). New ways to gather trace data: From tracking to takeout. Paper presented at European Political Science Association (EPSA), Belfast, United Kingdom.
    • van Atteveldt, W., Bogaardt, L., van Hees, V., Loecherbach, F., Moeller, J., & Trilling, D. (2019). Gathering mobile news consumption traces: An overview of possibilities and a prototype tool based on Google takeout. Abstract from Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap, Nijmegen.
    • van Atteveldt, W., Bogaardt, L., van Hees, V., Loecherbach, F., Möller, J. E., Trilling, D. C., & Welbers, K. (2019). Gathering mobile news consumption traces: An overview of possibilities and a prototype tool based on Google takeout. Abstract from International Communication Association (ICA), Washington, United States.

    2018

    • Loecherbach, F., & Trilling, D. C. (2018). It takes three to tango: The interplay of political press releases, Facebook, and press coverage in the Netherland. Abstract from Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap, Ghent, Belgium.

    2017

    • Schuck, A. R. T., Wonneberger, A., Meijers, M. H. C., & Loecherbach, F. (2017). Hoping for the best or fearing the worst? How emotions mediate effects of news coverage of the COP21 Paris Climate Summit. Paper presented at Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap.
    • Schuck, A. R. T., Wonneberger, A., Meijers, M. H. C., & Loecherbach, F. (2017). Who’s afraid of climate change? News coverage of the COP21 Paris climate summit and its effects on pro-environmental behavior. Paper presented at International Communication Association (ICA), San Diego, United States.
    • Wonneberger, A., Schuck, A. R. T., Meijers, M. H. C., & Loecherbach, F. (2017). Threat or efficacy? Effects of competitive media frames on climate change mitigation support. Abstract from COCE, Leicester, United Kingdom.

    2016

    • Schuck, A. R. T., Wonneberger, A., Meijers, M. H. C., & Loecherbach, F. (2016). Hoping for the best or fearing the worst? How emotions mediate effects of news coverage of the COP21 Paris Climate Summit. Paper presented at ECREA Conference 2016, Prague.

    Prize / grant

    Others

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