Jana Laura Egelhofer recently received the renowned state award for her dissertation entitled I don't like it – let's call it 'fake' – The content and consequences of the fake news debate, completed in December 2021 and supervised by Sophie Lecheler. The Award of Excellence honors the 40 most outstanding dissertations finalized during the past academic year and includes prize money of € 3,000.

In her dissertation, Jana investigated how the "fake news" term has been instrumentalized by politicians in order to discredit critical news outlets, and how this and other incidents of media criticism affect citizens' media perceptions.

Congratulations, dear Jana!