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Communication student wins Unilever Research Prize

Miranda Euser, master student in Communication Science, received at the 24th of November the Unilever Research Prize for the best Master Thesis of VU University Amsterdam 2011. She has been supervised by Friederike Schultz.

In her thesis “On the Poly-Vocal Narrativization of Crises: How economic, political, and public actors in the Netherlands communicated about the financial crisis”, Euser shows, how the financial crisis 2008/09 was socially negotiated in the dutch society between political, corporate and public actors. By analyzing press articles, interviews and speeches from ministries and corporate actors as well as blogposts from citizen, her thesis documents, that there are fundamental differences in the actors narratives and framing of the crisis, of responsibilities, consequences and solutions and in the way, actors justified their own interpretations. Economic actors were mainly regarded as being responsible for the crisis, although the public also blamed political actors for it. Whereas political and public actors preferred governmental and moral solutions for the crisis, economic actors primarily discussed economic solutions on the organizational level. The thesis is, according to her supervisor Friederike Schultz, outstanding, as it studies a socially relevant issue by linking complex theories from traditional research fields (mass communication, corporate communications, sociology, political science), and qualitative and quantitative methods.

The Unilever Research Prize
The Unilever Research Prize is annually awarded to the best Master student of each of the 13 Dutch research universities. The winners receive a cheque for € 2500 and a statue.  More information