Jose Ortega Chavez

Dr Jose David Ortega Chávez is a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the School of Media and Film. He teaches across a range of subjects, including Politics and the Media, Digital Media Research Methods, and Advertising and Branding.

Jose completed his PhD at the University of Leeds (2022), where he examined the role of the Colombian news media during the 2012–2016 peace process between the Colombian government and FARC, using the mediatisation of politics framework.

His research focuses on political communication, particularly the role of news media in peace negotiations. His work combines computational methods—such as topic modelling—with qualitative approaches, including thematic analysis, to examine political discourse and news media coverage.

Before transitioning to academia, Jose worked as a PR practitioner at GlaxoSmithKline and Burson-Marsteller, where he designed and executed media relations and internal communication strategies.

Jose is a Fellow of Advance HE and holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education.

Ortega Chávez, J.D. (2025). Understanding the role of the Colombian news media in a peace process during crisis times: The 2015 escalation of the conflict. Media, War & Conflict, 00(0), 1-22

Ortega, J. and Lawson, B. (2023). How journalists do memory work with numbers: The case of the 220,000 deaths during the Colombian conflict (1958–2012). Journalism. 24(8), pp.1657-1678.

Political communication

Media and War / Media and Peace

Computational text analysis