Toni G. L. A. van der Meer is an Associate Professor at the Department of Corporate Communication of ASCoR, University of Amsterdam. In 2016 Toni defended his PhD on crisis communication (2013-2015). The dissertation focused on the communicative interplay between the organization, news media, and the public in times of crisis. After his PhD, Toni has continued his line of research in crisis communication to answer questions like, what is the role of news media and/or social media in the framing of a crisis? What happens if inaccurate information gets spread during a crisis?
A second and related line of his research focuses on biases in thes news and mediatization. From 2019, Toni works on a NWO-funded Veni project titled “Is the world really in crisis? News bias in the contemporary media environment”. Despite long-term global trends demonstrating how living conditions have improved, media coverage is often event-driven and skewed to the negative side when it comes to selecting news items, leaving a different impression among audiences. This discrepancy between reality and media reality has resulted in research questions such as; has media coverage grown further apart from real-world developments over time? Who expose themselves to this type of negative news in today's high-choice media environment? and what are the effects of such exposure on public perceptions?