Since August 2020, Jan Rau is a Junior Researcher in the Media Research Methods Lab at the Leibniz-Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI), working on its (Social) Media Observatory, a project for the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC).
His research focuses on the question of how the internet shapes and changes the media public sphere. Among other things, he looks at digital echo chambers and counterpublics, the manipulation of public opinion on the internet and right-wing movements on the internet.
He holds an MSc in the Social Sciences of the Internet from the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University and has worked at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Computational Social Science Department at GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for Social Science, Princeton University, and the Computational Propaganda Project at the Oxford Internet Institute.