Rebekka Rieser

Rebekka Rieser is a researcher at the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ), University of Zurich, and a member of the URPP Digital Religion(s). Her work lies at the intersection of religion, media, and digital communication, with a particular focus on the (in)visibility of religion in the digitized public sphere of Western democracies.

She examines how religious discourses, actors, and representations are shaped across social and legacy media, and how these dynamics influence the public visibility and reputation of religion. Her research pays particular attention to the conditions under which religious meanings—ranging from institutionalized forms to more diffuse and implicit expressions—become visible, contested, or remain latent in the digital public sphere, and how religion is negotiated and understood within these mediated environments. In doing so, she analyzes how these processes shape societal understandings of religion and its legitimacy in pluralistic, mediatized publics.

Methodologically, she employs mixed-methods approaches that combine computational techniques with quantitative and qualitative analyses of media and platform data.