Profile
Julia Sonnevend is Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications at The New School for Social Research in New York. She is a sociologist of culture and media, focusing on the events, icons, symbols and charismatic personalities of public life. Sonnevend is the author of Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics (Princeton University Press), Stories Without Borders: The Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event (Oxford University Press), and co-editor of Education and Social Media: Toward a Digital Future (MIT Press). She has recently been profiled in The New Yorker, and her ideas have been featured in a wide range of media outlets, including Time magazine, The Atlantic, NPR , BBC Newshour, Teen Vogue, and Review of Democracy. Her work has been published in interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journals including New Media & Society; Information, Communication & Society; International Journal of Press/Politics; Media, Culture & Society and the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. Sonnevend received her PhD in Communications from Columbia University, her Master of Laws degree from Yale Law School, and her Juris Doctorate and Master of Arts degrees in German Studies and Aesthetics from Eötvös Loránd University Budapest.
Degrees Held
PhD in Communications, Columbia University, 2013
LLM, Yale Law School, 2007
Recent Publications
Books:
Sonnevend, J. (forthcoming August 2024). Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics. Princeton University Press.
Sonnevend, J. (2016). Stories Without Borders: The Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event. New York: Oxford University Press.
Translation: Hungarian (Corvina Publisher, June 2018)
Greenhow, C.,Sonnevend J., & Agur, C. (Eds.). (2016). Education and Social Media: Toward a Digital Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Journal articles:
Sonnevend, J., & Kövesdi, V. (2023). More Than Just a Strongman: The Strategic Construction of Viktor Orbán’s Charismatic Authority on Facebook. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 0(0).
Sonnevend, J. & Steiert, O. (2022). The Power of Predictability: How Angela Merkel Constructed Her Authenticity on Instagram. New Media & Society, 0(0).
Sonnevend, J. (2020). A virus as an Icon: The 2020 Pandemic in Images. American Journal of Cultural Sociology. 12, 451-461.
Sonnevend, J. & Katz, Y. (2020). Capturing Hearts: Charm, Personal Magnetism and The Iranian Nuclear Deal in the American and Israeli Press. Journalism Studies, 21 (11):1551–1570.
Sonnevend, J. & Kim, Y. (2020). An unlikely seducer: Kim Jong-un’s charm offensive from the PyeongChang Winter Olympics until the Trump-Kim summit. International Journal of Communication, 14, 1398–1420.
Sonnevend, J. (2019) Charm offensive: mediatized country image transformations in international relations. Information, Communication & Society, 22(5), 695-701.
Sonnevend, J. (2018). The lasting charm of Media Events. Media, Culture & Society 40(1), 122-126.
Sonnevend, J. (2018). Interruptions of time: The coverage of the missing Malaysian plane MH370 and the concept of “events” in media research. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 19(1), 75-92.
Sonnevend, J. (May 25, 2017). Our New Walls: The Rise of Separation Barriers in the Age of Globalization. E-International Relations (also published on Public Seminar).
Sonnevend, J. (2015). “Symbol of Hope for a World Without Walls”: The Fall of the Berlin Wall as a Global Iconic Event. Divinatio, 39-40, 223-233 (also translated into Bulgarian)
Sonnevend, J. (2013). Counterrevolutionary icons: The representation of the 1956 ‘counterrevolution’ in the Hungarian communist press. Journalism Studies, 14(3), 336-354.
Special issues in peer-reviewed journals:
Sonnevend, J. (2018). “Media Events Today”, Media, Culture & Society, 40(1), 110-113
Bodker, H., & Sonnevend, J. (2018). “The ShiftingTemporalities of Journalism”, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 19(1), 3-6
Peer-reviewed bibliography:
Sonnevend, J. (2017). Media Events. In Moy, P. (Ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Communication. New York: Oxford University Press.
Book chapters:
Sonnevend, J. & Steiert, O. (2022) “Seeing a Crisis Through Media: Narrating the Coronavirus Pandemic”, In J. Witte, S. Pickard, & M. Welker (Eds), The Impact of the Media on Character Formation, Ethical Education, and the Communication of Values in Late Modern Pluralistic Societies. (pp. 137-150). Evangelische Verlangsanstalt: University of Heidelberg.
Sonnevend, J. (2020). The East in You Never Leaves. In Laczo, F. & Gabrijelcic, L. L. (Eds.) The Legacy of Division: East and West After 1989. Budapest: CEU Press. [also published on Eurozine and Public Seminar, and translated into Slovene]
Sonnevend, J. (2018). Facts (Almost) Never Win Over Myths. In Boczkowski, P. & Papacharissi, Z. (Eds.) Trump and the Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sonnevend, J. (2016). Event. In Peters, B. (Ed.), Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture (pp. 109-118). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Balkin, J. M., & Sonnevend, J. (2016). The digital transformation of education. In Greenhow, C., Sonnevend J., & Agur, C. (Eds.), Education and social media: Toward a digital future (pp. 9-25). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sonnevend, J. (2016). More hope! Ceremonial media events are still important in the 21st century. In Fox, A. (Ed.), Global Perspectives on Media Events in Contemporary Society (pp. 132-141). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Media
"'The Big Clean Up': The 2020 Pandemic as a Representational Crisis," SSRC Items, September 27, 2020
"Mekkora Orbán vonzereje, és miért ilyen fontos, hogy van neki?" 24, August 13, 2019
"The East in You Never Leaves," Public Seminar, March 16, 2019
"Why We Need More Essays about Media," Public Seminar, March 6, 2018
"Megingott a liberális világrend, újra büszkén lehet falat építeni," 24, February 21, 2019
Cited in "'Trump and the Media': Work-in-Progress Dispatches from a Sinking Ship," Pop Matters, October 29, 2018
"'There Was No Berlin Wall, and It Never Fell'," Research Matters, July 5, 2017
"Our New Walls," Public Seminar, June 16, 2017