Dr. Christian Baden is a senior lecturer at the Department of Communication and Journalism and the Smart Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the collaborative construction of meaning in dynamic, political public debates. Specifically, Christian Baden’s work investigates the processes of cultural and discursive resonance that render specific ideas intuitively plausible and accounts for their enduring, sometimes resilient presence in public discourse and thought. His publications have contributed to theory and methodology in research on framing, discourse dynamics, and the social and psychological process of sense making in a political public sphere. His methodological approach combines techniques of qualitative discourse analysis and frame analysis with network-analytic perspectives and contemporary strategies for the automated processing of large-scale discourse. Christian Baden operates the JAmCAT platform for automated text analysis, and is a member of the INFOCORE (“(In)forming Conflict Prevention, Response, and Resolution”) project consortium investigating the role of media in violent conflict”.
Prior to joining the Department of Communication and Journalism, Christian Baden was a Marie Curie Fellow with a project focusing on frame resonance in violent discourse (RECORD): “Frame Justification and Resonance in Conflict-Related Discourse”). From 2009 to 2014, he worked as assistant professor at the Institute for Communication Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. His PhD dissertation “Communication, Contextualization and Cognition: Patterns and Processes of Frames' Influence on People's Interpretations of the EU Constitution”, defended at the University of Amsterdam (ASCoR) in 2010, develops a theory of frames within thought and discourse. Applying large-scale semantic network analysis, he has developed various techniques for detecting frames as latent, time-changing structures in complex debates. Other lines of his research include the psychology of discourse reception and sense making processes, the integration of visual information (and information processing) into theories of political discourse, and the study of the strategic construction of meaning in political debates (e.g., political public relations, propaganda). Most of his research deals with the meaning constructed to make sense of (political or violent) conflict and crisis in contemporary society (including European political debates, the financial crisis, war and conflict).
Christian Baden has taught courses on various aspects of strategic political communication, journalism and the public construction of meaning, as well as social science methodology and research practice. At present, he is teaching classes in conflict discourse and propaganda, plurality of meaning and network analytic approaches to communication.