On Thursday, October 13, the two-day workshop “Acting on Media” starts in the guest house of the University of Bremen
The workshop is jointly organized by the “Communicative Figurations” research network and the Creative Unit of the same name at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) of the University of Bremen and the subject group “Sociology of Media Communication” in the German Communication Association (DGPuK).
Researchers from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK will discuss innovative forms to act with media in order to shape society and public discourse.
Detailled information on the workshop can be accessed here.
From December 7-9, 2016 the Bremen House of Science (Haus der Wissenschaft) will host the international conference “Communicative Figurations” on the interdependent transformation of communication, media, society and culture.
The ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research of the University of Bremen, organises the international conference in collaboration with the Hans-Bredow-Institute for Media Research, Hamburg and the SOCIUM of the Universty of Bremen. The conference welcomes numerous speakers from all over Europe and the United States who investigate transforming communications against the background of an increasing complexity of the media environment. Richard Rogers (Digital Method Initiative, University of Amsterdam) and Gina Neff (Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford) will be keynote speakers.
For today’s life-worlds, media communication is essential: work, leisure, socialization, the public sphere, public engagement, etc. are articulated by different types of mediated communication. Even from a historical point of view it is impossible for us to imagine the multiple and contradictory processes of modernization without media. Today, various domains of the social world are so closely related to (digital) media that they could not exist in their present form beyond media. In this sense, we live in times of “deep mediatization”.
A particular challenge of researching this stage of mediatization is the present complexity of the media environment: It is not one single medium that is the driving force of change. With the spreading of various technical communication media – television, radio, mobile phone, internet platforms etc. – we are confronted with a “media manifold” which stimulates various processes of re-mediation and transmediation. And as media are more and more software-based and related to the internet, their use becomes entangled with processes of datafication. How can we investigate then transforming communications in times of deep mediatization? How do the figurations of living together change with the media environment?
The conference takes these fundamental questions seriously and moves the transformation of communications and figurations through the “media manifold” into the foreground. The focuses of the conference are the transformation of journalism, religion, education, communities, politics, and public discourse. Beyond this, the conference puts an emphasis on the (digital) methods used to investigate related processes of transformation. It is the concluding event of the Creative Research Unit “Communicative Figurations”, being funded within the framework of the Initiative of Excellence.
The full programme and information on the registration procedure can be accessed here.
The programme brochure can be downloaded here.
Members of the “Communicative Figurations” research network present at the annual conference of the International Associaction of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) in Leicester, UK
The IAMCR annual conference takes place from July 27 to 31, 2016 at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom on the topic “Memory, Commemoration and Communication: Looking Back, Looking Forward”.
The following members of the research network will be at Leicester to present their research:
Prof. Dr. Uwe Hasebrink (University of Hamburg): Fantasy movies within audiences’ transmedia repertoires. The case of The Hobbit (Juli 29, 09:00-10:30)
Prof. Dr. Friedrich Krotz (University of Bremen): Mediatization studies: from the system of single independent media to a computer controlled digital infrastructure and some consequences (July 28, 09:00-10:30)
Prof. Dr. Christine Lohmeier (University of Bremen) (zus. mit Dr. Christian Pentzold): Reflexive Remembrance and Reconstruction in Mediated Times (July 30, 09:00-10:30)
Christina Sanko (University of Bremen): Memory-related Communication Repertoires: Generational Memory Work in Urban Vietnam (July 28, 09:00-10:30)
The full conference programm can be accessed here.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp (University of Bremen) publishes a debate article on the status of Communication and Media Studies in data-driven times in the German journal “Publizistik”. The article can be accessed for free (Open Access).
Andreas Hepp argues in support of an extension of the scope of communication and media studies. For quite some time, such an extension was connected with a fear of a dissolution of boundaries and increasing fuzziness of the discipline. Hepp does not share this fear, but rather speaks for a joint fundamental perspective of mediated communication or ‘mediation’. In his view, this opens up the opportunity to address the challenges of communication and media change in data-driven times with as many different perspectives as possible.
The full article can be accessed here for free (in German language).
The Danish academic journal “Mediekultur” just published a Special Issue on “Researching cross-media communication: Methodological approaches”
In six contributions, communication and media scholars discuss with which different and triangulated methods cross-media communication can be researched. Among the authors are Kim Christian Schrøder, Christian Kobbernagel, Kristian Møller Jørgensen, Cristina Miguel, Anne Mette Thorhauge, Stine Lomborg, Susana Tosca and Lisbeth Klastrup.
The Special Issue also includes a contribution by Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp, Cindy Roitsch and Dr. Matthias Berg (ZeMKI, University of Bremen) on “Investigating communication networks contextually: Qualitative network analysis as cross-media research”. Their article introduces the approach of contextualised communication network analysis as a qualitative procedure for researching communicative relationships realised through the media. It combines qualitative interviews on media appropriation, egocentric network maps, and media diaries. Through the triangulation of these methods of data collection, it is possible to gain a differentiated insight into the specific meanings, structures and processes of communication networks across a variety of media. The approach is illustrated using a recent study dealing with the mediatisation of community building among young people. In this context, the qualitative communication network analysis has been applied to distinguish “localists” from “centrists”, “multilocalists”, and “pluralists”. These different “horizons of mediatised communitisation” are connected to distinct communication networks. Since this involves today a variety of different media, the contextual analysis of communication networks necessarily has to imply a cross-media perspective.
Further information on the Special Issue and its full texts can be accessed here.
ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz is co-editor of a new book on diversity in transcultural and international communication
She has co-edited the volume with Jun. Prof. Dr. Carola Richter and Dr. Indira Dupuis (both FU Berlin). The book comprises articles that base on contributions for the annual conference of the section “Internationale und Interkulturelle Kommunikation” of the German Communication Association that was hosted at the University of Bremen at the end of 2014.
Further information can be accessed here.
