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 (Forschungsinstitut Gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhalt FGZ)
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.
His research to date has centred on topics including echo chambers and polarization, the manipulation of public opinion, right-wing populism and extremism, and the role of digital media as a counterpublic.