Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The WHAT-IF project is coordinated by the Communication Science department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Societal Analytics Lab. The lab explores where the world of social behaviour meets computational techniques, facilitating the use of digital traces in finding the answer to complex social-scientific questions.
About the team
Wouter van Atteveldt is Professor of Computational Communication Science & Political Communication at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He’s interested in developing and applying the computational methods and tools needed to study media effects in a fragmented digital media landscape with a special interest in the introduction, adaptation and validation of methods from AI and computational linguistics into communication science research.
Wouter is the project leader of WHAT-IF.
Aijan Imanbaeva is the project manager of the WHAT-IF project based at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
She is involved in the project management and coordination of WHAT-IF project (WP1).
Mariken van der Velden is Associate Professor of Political Communication at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She studies the impact of information on citizens’ cognitions, attitudes and behaviors in various domains of media and politics; especially with expertise in polarization, and opinion formation.
Mariken is co-leader of WP8 (communication) and team member of WP1 (management) and WP5 (solutions).
Kasper Welbers is Associate Professor at the department of communication science. He is a co-Director of The Societal Analytics Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Vice Chair of the computational methods division at the International Communication Association, and scientific representative of the OPINION COST Action network. Kasper combines methodological contributions in computational communication science with substantive research of journalism and political communication. A central theme is how news gets around and who the most important gatekeepers are in this process.
Kasper is part of WP3 (focused on Data Donation) and WP5 (building the infrastructure for immersive experiments).
Sílvia Majó-Vázquez is Assistant Professor at VU and Research Associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University Oxford. She studies how digital technologies are reconfiguring the news media ecology and the role of technological platforms in mediating news consumption and shaping people’s attitudes towards media and politics.
Within WHAT-If, Sílvia is involved in WP5 and the task-force for the survey development for WP3. Specifically, she is working on the immersive experiments testing the effects of modes of exposure to news information.
Rupert Kiddle is a postdoctoral researcher at the VU. His research explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and human information-seeking behavior, examining how emerging technologies shape our digital experiences. He investigates how generative AI, recommender systems, and user interfaces create complex entanglements of technical and social elements, with a particular focus on digital journalism and other information-rich environments.
Rupert is primarily involved in the design and implementation of the immersive participant-centered experiments (WP5), which necessitates secondary involvement in the development of the LLM-enabled agents that will be embedded into these experiments (WP3, WP4).
Damian Trilling is Professor of Journalism Studies at the Vrije Universiteit. He studies the changing news media environment, how people engage with news, and how news spreads with a particular interest in feedback loops in these processes, both human and algorithmic.
Within WHAT-IF, Damian has an advisory role and contributes to both the overall design as well as to specific case studies.
Philipp K. Masur is Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with a focus on privacy, social influence and digital literacy.
Philip is an associated researcher at WHAT-IF, primarily collaborating on WP5 (experiments)
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