Dr. Bartosz Zerebecki

Biography

Bartosz G. Zerebecki is a junior lecturer and PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam, specializing in media and communication. He teaches courses on social science research design and quantitative methods in media communication and supervises Bachelor thesis projects. His dissertation examines the role of TV shows in promoting positive diversity attitudes among ethnic and sexual minorities through various methodologies. Using semi-structured interviews, Bartosz studied how youth selects entertainment TV content and identifies characters that they can relate to. He developed a quantitative content analysis codebook to evaluate minority representation on television and introduced the Character Recognizability Scale, which measures the sense of similarity between characters from social minorities and majorities. His research indicates that different types of recognizability can predict media engagement and influence prejudice reduction towards LGBTQ individuals. Bartosz's final studies will use random intercept cross-lagged panel models to examine how exposure to minority characters affects engagement and diversity attitudes over time. He has published empirical research on marketization in Poland, preadolescent technology use, and LGBTQ gaming, among others, in various journals such as Sociology Compass, Psychology of Popular Media, and the Journal of Homosexuality. Bartosz holds a BA in Post-Colonial Studies from Brown University and earned an MSc in the research master program in Sociology, Culture, Media, and Arts from the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication.

Research Interests