Dr. phil. Tobias Eberwein, Dipl.-Journ., is Deputy Director of the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Klagenfurt, where he also leads the Research Group “Media Accountability and Media Change”. His research focuses on the fields of media accountability and media governance, journalism and media innovations, methods of empirical social sciences as well as comparative media and communication studies. Tobias has contributed to multiple cross-national research initiatives. Amongst others, he currently serves as the Austrian partner of the Horizon Europe project “Fostering capacity building for civic resilience and participation: Dialogic communication ethics and accountability” (DIACOMET) as well as the Horizon 2020 project “Media-related risks and opportunities for deliberative communication: Development scenarios of the European media landscape” (MEDIAdelcom).
Tobias was a visiting professor (Vertretungsprofessor) at the Institute of Media and Communication at Dresden University of Technology and at the Institute of Journalism at Dortmund University of Technology. Prior to this, he worked as a research associate at TU Dortmund and at the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism, where among other things he was responsible for the scientific coordination of the EU project “Media Accountability and Transparency in Europe” (MediaAcT). Up till today, he acts as a visiting lecturer at Hamburg Media School.
Tobias studied Journalism, English and American Literary and Cultural Studies as well as Political Sciences in Dortmund. His doctoral thesis, defended with summa cum laude in 2013, investigates into narrative forms of journalistic reporting in history and present. He completed a traineeship (Volontariat) at the daily newspaper “Westfalenpost” in Hagen and looks back at more than 20 years of professional experience in practical journalism – be it for daily news media in the print, broadcasting or online sector, or, more recently, as editor of various learned journals. From 2005 to 2008, he was the review editor of “Publizistik”; in 2009, he co-founded the online review journal “r:k:m – Rezensionen:Kommunikation:Medien“; from 2019 to 2022, he was Associate Editor of the “Central European Journal of Communication” (CEJC). He currently serves as Specialty Chief Editor of the Open Access journal “Frontiers in Media Governance and the Public Sphere“. He has published 13 books and more than 50 book chapters and journal articles – among others in the “Journal of Communication”, the “European Journal of Communication”, “Journalism”, “Journalism Practice” and “Javnost – The Public”.
Besides, Tobias serves as President of the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS) – and of the Dortmund-based rowing club RC Germania von 1929. He is also a passionate long-distance runner.
