A few weeks before the presidential elections in the USA, Austrian journalist Barbara Gasser visited the Journalism and Public Relations degree programme. In her lecture “Political Campaigns – Presidential Elections in the United States”, Gasser, who lives in Los Angeles, explained the basics of the two candidates, the electoral system and the contested states and showed the third-semester students official campaign material and current polls.
In the workshop part, the students compared the campaigns of Harris and Trump with the campaigns of the upcoming state elections in Styria. They then analysed the US campaign material, voter guides and the candidates’ social media presence.
Award-winning journalist
Barbara Gasser is Vice President of the Austrian Film Critics Guild (AFCG), a voter for the Golden Globes and a member of FIPRESCI and MPA. Gasser is the only Austrian journalist to have served two terms on the board of the Los Angeles Press Club and later the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
She has also been a jury member at a number of international film festivals, including Tromsø, Mestia, Yerevan, Munich, Vienna, Palic, Schwerin and Miskolc. In 2024, Gasser was the first journalist from Austria to serve as a FIPRESCI jury member at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Over the course of her career, she has attended over 30 international film festivals, participated in panel discussions and masterclasses.
She has won numerous awards, including the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award and the Southern California Journalism Award. She is a recipient of the Jackie Coogan Award and has been named a Goodwill Ambassador for Styria.
