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Thesis Topics

This document discusses several potential thesis clusters for students. The first cluster focuses on how organizations communicate about societal and private issues, how employees make sense of these issues, and how stakeholders evaluate organizations based on their communication. The second cluster examines unintended effects of persuasive messages, such as resistance, and investigates deception in influencer marketing. The third cluster explores how cognitive science can inform effective and responsible media content creation and the cognitive processes of content creators and audiences. The fourth cluster is about using digital approaches to stimulate responsible behaviors like healthy consumption and moderate gambling. The last cluster discusses how personality, cognition, intentions, biases and emotions can impact interpersonal communication in various modalities and settings.

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Kim van Soeren
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12 views2 pages

Thesis Topics

This document discusses several potential thesis clusters for students. The first cluster focuses on how organizations communicate about societal and private issues, how employees make sense of these issues, and how stakeholders evaluate organizations based on their communication. The second cluster examines unintended effects of persuasive messages, such as resistance, and investigates deception in influencer marketing. The third cluster explores how cognitive science can inform effective and responsible media content creation and the cognitive processes of content creators and audiences. The fourth cluster is about using digital approaches to stimulate responsible behaviors like healthy consumption and moderate gambling. The last cluster discusses how personality, cognition, intentions, biases and emotions can impact interpersonal communication in various modalities and settings.

Uploaded by

Kim van Soeren
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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(Online) Strategic communication / Organizations in societal debates (webcare, issues

management, reputation management)


Organizations are operating in the public eye, and in order to remain their legitimacy,
they are faced with the task to communicate about societal issues such as sustainability,
social inequality, and climate change, but also about private issues, such as service
failures, organizational transgressions (e.g., fraudulous, immoral, agressive or sexually
transgressive behaviors at work), and incidents.

In this cluster, students conduct research into the ways in which organizations
communicate (proactively or reactively) about such issues, the ways in which employees
in organizations collectively make sense of these issues, and the ways in which internal
and external stakeholders make (moral and evaluative) judgments of these issues, and of
the involved organizations on the basis of issue communication.

Persuasion, resistance & deception


While persuasive messages are often investigated based on whether it leads to changes
in attitudes and behaviour, convincing someone else is also likely to lead to unintended
effects. Those unintended effects (for instance, resisistance, materialism, ...) are often
understudied in the context of digital media. Furthermore, to. date, little reserach has
investigated to what extent deception in marketing messages (i.e., being untruthful)
contributes to these unwanted effects. The latter is especially relevant in regard to
influencer marketing, as influencers may endorse products that have. not used.

In sum, students subscribing for this cluster will dive into a specfic persuasion type, and
investigate whether and under what consequences unintended effects occur. Research in
this cluster will most likely focus on quantatitive, experimental methods, considering
possible moderators and mediators. This experimental method will allow students to test
their conceptual model, which they have developed based on mediapsychological
theories. The unintended outcomes of interest may relate to advertising effectiveness, or
audience-related.

Cognition and media


Media content creation is a critical component of the communication, marketing, and
innovation strategy of many private and public organizations. Recent advances from
cognitive science provide new ways to explain how people think, sense, and experience,
and can therefore revolutionize our understanding of how we perceive, are infuenced
by, and create media content. Advancing our understanding of how (new) media content
and affordances influence its audience can subsequently inform evidence based content
creation practice. Possibly enabling the creation of more effective yet also more
responsible media content. The cognitive perspective can also help to better understand
what goes on in the mind of content creators when they create, which knowledge can
help to support the creative process of content creators. Possibly enabling a more fluent
and creative content creation process.

Within this thesis cluster, you can therefore explore the cognitive foundations of content
creation or the cognitive foundations of media effects.
Stimulating responsible behavior (healthy & sustainable consumption, moderate gambling)
via digital approaches

Interpersonal Communication
Communication does not only serve the purpose of conveying objective information but
often does much more than that. Someone's personality, cognition, intentions, biases, or
emotions can resonate in their words and actions, which, in turn, can shape the
understanding of others. Such factors can affect interpersonal communication in multiple
ways: they can influence the content and form of communication (e.g., ideas, the words
we choose, or the way we produce them) in different modalities (e.g., writing vs.
speaking) and in different settings (e.g., face-to-face, text-only, computer-mediated
communication). Additionally, it is not always clear whether the intended communicated
message is the same one that is understood by another person. For example, in
multicultural contexts, research has shown that native and non-native speakers tend to
use and judge language differently. Moreover, perspective taking is seen as an important
social skill.But how can we take that alternative point of view? If we only know about our
own perspective, it is hard to let go of that. Here, recent research suggests that it is
necessary to first get the perspective of others by asking them about their thoughts and
feelings. This ‘perspective getting’ can increase our knowledge about others’ viewpoints,
but it might also have positive effects on interpersonal behavior.

So, a variety of factors can impact interpersonal communication and thus also our
everyday life in various ways, both positively as well as negatively. In this theme, you can
explore such factors and their importance for different kinds of interpersonal
communication.

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