(Bartosz) BG Zerebecki, MSc

Biography

Bartosz G. Zerebecki is a junior lecturer and a PhD candidate in the Department of Media and Communication. He teaches courses on social science research design, quantitative methods in media and communication, and supervises Bachelor thesis projects. 

His dissertation examines the role of TV shows in promoting positive diversity attitudes towards ethnic and sexual minorities through different methodologies. Using semi-structured interviews, he studied how the youth chooses entertainment TV content and what characters they relate to. Subsequently, Bartosz designed a quantitative content analysis codebook to evaluate minority representation on TV. The third study introduced the Character Recognizability Scale, which measures the sense of similarity with characters from social minorities and majorities alike. Afterward, using structural equation modeling, he showed that different types of recognizability predict other media engagement measurements and prejudice reduction towards LGBTQ people. The final studies will employ a random intercept cross-lagged panel model to examine whether exposure to minority characters and engagement with them through recognizability causes diversity attitudes improvement over time.

Besides, Bartosz published empirical research about marketization in Poland, preadolescent technology use, and LGBTQ gaming, and theoretical works on media effects. 

His work appeared in journals such as Sociology Compass, Psychology of Popular Media, Journal of Homosexuality, Mass Communication and Society, and Simulation and Gaming.

Bartosz holds a BA in Post-Colonial Studies from Brown University and earned an MSc in the research master program Sociology of Culture, Media and Arts from Erasmus School of History Culture and Communication.