To path indicator Subpages of “Professorship“ To navigation To quick access To footer with other services
To content
Economic Policy and Journalism
5 students, male and female, are walking on the campus in front of EF 50 building, they are happily chatting, the brownish leaves on the trees and the student's clothing suggest that it's autumn © Institute of Journalism
Academic Staff

Tobias Schmidt (M.A.)

Research Assistant and PhD Candidate

Office 3.504
Emil-Figge-Straße 50
44227 Dortmund

Phone: +49 (0)231 755 8287

Email: send email

Consultation Hours

By arrangement - to be booked via e-mail

Photo: Profile picture of Tobias Schmidt. He is wearing a black pullover and has short blond hair. Background: green screen. © Institute of Journalism

Research and Teaching

Since October 2020, Tobias Schmidt has been working as a Research Assistant at the Chair of Economic Policy Journalism.

His research focuses on economic narratives and the media coverage of inflation, as well as the dynamics of the European public sphere. His work explores how economic issues are framed in the media and how these narratives shape public understanding of economic policy.

Tobias Schmidt also contributes to teaching, with a focus on text mining and speech and language processing, helping students develop skills in data analysis and computational methods applied to media and communication studies.

Mr. Schmidt is actively involved in project collaborations within the Data Competence Network (DaCoNet) and the Research Center DoCMA. These initiatives focus on advancing data-driven research and enhancing the use of computational tools in media analysis.

Publications

  • Schmidt, T., Lange, K. R., Reccius, M., Müller, H., Roos, M., & Jentsch, C. (2025). Identifying economic narratives in large text corpora -- An integrated approach using Large Language Models. Ruhr Economic Papers. Link

  • Lange, K. R., Schmidt, T., Reccius, M., Müller, H., Roos, M., & Jentsch, C. (2025). Narrative shift detection: A hybrid approach of dynamic topic models and large language models. Proceedings of the Text2Story’25 Workshop. Link

  • Schmidt, T. (2025). Narrating Inflation: How German EconomicJournalists explain Post-Covid Price Rises. DoCMA Working Paper #14. Link

  • Schmidt, T., Hornig, N. (2024). (Un)covering Europe. Foreign Entity Recognition in Large Text Corpoa: A Fine-Tuned LLM Approach. Poster Presentation at the International Conference for Computational Social Science (IC2S2).

  • Müller, H., Schmidt, T., Rieger, J., Hornig, N., & Hufnagel, L. M. (2023). The inflation attention cycle: Updating the Inflation Perception Indicator (IPI) up to February 2023. A research note. DoCMA Working Paper #13. Link

  • Müller, H., Mourlon‐Druol, E., Porcaro, G., Schmidt, T. (2022). You'll Never Talk Alone: What Media Narratives on European Reforms Reveal about a Polity in the Making. EU3D Research Paper #27 Link

  • Lange, K.-R., Reccius, M., Schmidt, T., Müller, H., Roos, M., und Jentsch, C. (2022). Towards extracting collective economic narratives from texts. Ruhr Economic Papers #963. Link

  • Müller, H., Schmidt, T., Rieger, J., Hufnagel, L. M., & Hornig, N. (2022). A German inflation narrative. How the media frame price dynamics: Results from a RollingLDA analysis (No. 9). DoCMA Working Paper. Link

Academic and Working Background

  • 10/2020: Master thesis “Mario Draghi: eight years of reporting on the former ECB President. A German-French comparison using LDA-supported content analysis”
  • Since 11/2018: Free-lancing copywriter and concept designer
  • 10/2017-10/2020: Studies of Economics and Journalism (M.A.) (TU Dortmund)
  • 10/2016-02/2018: Student assistant (tutor) at the chair for marketing for the field of market research (TU Dortmund)
  • 07/2016: Bachelor thesis “Acceptance and security risks of wearable technologies within the internet of tings”
  • 06/2015-06/2016: Student assistant at the chair of service management (Fernuniversität Hagen)
  • 10/2012-07/2016: Studies of Economics (B. Sc.) (TU Dortmund)
  • Internships at taz (department: ecology and economy) and Handelsblatt (department: investigative research)