Description of research and teaching

Zea Szebeni is a social psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. Her research explores the contested nature of knowledge in the digital age, focusing on three main areas: critical disinformation studies, visual politics, and collective epistemic ownership. Her work primarily examines these dynamics in Hungary and Finland.

Her approach to disinformation is critically oriented, moving beyond questions of true versus false to investigate broader epistemic dynamics, how certain narratives gain legitimacy while others are dismissed, and the social and political mechanisms that shape what counts as credible knowledge.

Her visual politics research analyzes how political messages are communicated through mundane and whimsical imagery on social media platforms. She is particularly interested in how everyday objects and banal visuals become powerful political tools, and how audiences engage with this content through comments and online interactions, creating participatory spaces of meaning-making.

In her work on collective epistemic ownership, she examines how majority and minority groups negotiate authority over national narratives in national contexts. This research explores the power dynamics involved in determining who has the legitimacy to define and "own" a nation's story and collective knowledge.