Background

Nils Holmberg has a doctoral degree in Media and Communication Science from Lund University in December 2016. The focus of his dissertation was to investigate the effects of web advertising on children aged 9-12 when they use the internet to solve different types of tasks, e.g. read and understand texts in an online newspaper. To investigate this, he used experimental methods to systematically vary the content and form of web ads. Physiological measuring equipment was then used to investigate how different advertising properties affected children's visual attention and ability to solve tasks online. In addition to providing in-depth knowledge of experimental methods and eye movement measurement, this dissertation also provided knowledge of the entire complex ecosystem that constitutes digital marketing.

Research

Nils Holmberg’s current research centers on computational content analysis within the social sciences, with a focus on quantitative methods for analyzing communication and media content. This includes the development and application of techniques for extracting and visualizing content features from digital texts and images. Methods such as natural language processing and computer vision are used to identify patterns, classify messages, and explore how communication reflects and shapes societal issues over time. The research aims to bridge social science theory with machine learning and artificial intelligence, enabling large-scale analysis of narratives, claims, and symbolic representations. A central focus lies on applying these tools to empirical cases in sustainability communication, producing interpretable visual outputs and critically reflecting on the possibilities and limitations of automated analysis in public discourse research.