Silvia Knobloch

Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick is a Professor at the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. She is an internationally recognized expert in the study of media use and effects, particularly in the area of selective media use in the realms of political communication, news, health communication, entertainment, and new communication technologies. Specific examples of her work include selective use of attitude-reinforcing political messages, impacts of exposure to idealized body imagery in the media, effects of statistical/exemplar information in health news, the appeal of tragedy in popular entertainment, and suspense in sports in the media.

She serves as lead editor of the ISI-ranked journal Media Psychology and has published close to 60 peer-reviewed articles, including 25 in the communication discipline's flagship journals, in addition to three solo-authored books, a co-edited book, and 30 book chapters.

Knobloch-Westerwick earned her PhD from the University of Music, Theatre, & Media, Hanover Germany. She joined the Ohio State faculty in 2005. She has held faculty appointments at Dresden University of Technology (Germany), University of Michigan/Ann Arbor, and University of California-Davis, in addition to working as post-doctoral fellow with Dolf Zillmann at the University of Alabama. At The Ohio State University, she serves as Director of Graduate Studies in Communication.