We offer courses in the fields of political communication, international communication as well as traditional social science and AI-enabled computational methods.
Our teaching is mainly aimed at students of the B.A. Journalism and Strategic Communication (JoKo) and the M.A. Communication in Digital Societies (KoDi). We also open thematically relevant courses to students focussing on cultural studies of Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet region.
We are currently working on three research projects: (1) the Authoritarian AI project investigates how authoritarian states – in particular Russia – regulate and utilise large language models for propaganda purposes (funded by bidt); (2) the ‘Central Asia as Cinematic Territory’ project examines cinematic content in the Central Asian republics (funded by DFG); (3) the POLINOCULATE project investigates strategies for combating disinformation (funded by EU Horizon Europe).
Professor Florian Toepfl holds the Chair of Political Communication with a Focus on Eastern Europe and the Post-Soviet Region. Before joining the University of Passau in 2019, he led an Emmy Noether junior research group at Freie Universität Berlin (2014–2019) and was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics (2012–2014). He headed the ERC Consolidator Project "The Consequences of the Internet for Russia's Informational Influence Abroad" (RUSINFORM, 2019–2025).
Dr.-Hans-Kapfinger-Str. 14c
94032 Passau
For further information, please consult the Contact Page.
