Dr J. Peter (1972) has been named Professor of Media Entertainment at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.

Jochen Peter’s research investigates how media use impacts the psychosocial development of children and adolescents. Specific studies have included the role of social media in the lives of teenagers and how sexual media content influences the attitudes and behaviour of young people. At present, Peter is seeking to identify the underlying cognitive or affective processes that can best explain the influence media have on this audience, and exploring means for optimising the quality of youth surveys.

Jochen Peter has been at the UvA’s Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) since 1998, starting as a PhD and postdoctoral researcher and subsequently becoming senior university lecturer. He is also co-founder of the Center for Research on Children, Adolescents and the Media (CCAM). Peter was awarded a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in 2005, followed by a NWO Vidi grant in 2009. In that same year he was honoured with a prestigious Young Scholar Award from the International Communication Association, the world’s leading association of communication scientists, in recognition of his ‘outstanding early career research’. In total, Peter has received no less than 26 awards for his work. He sits on the editorial board of several academic journals, including Communication Research and the Journal of Communication.