Professor Dr. Andreas Hepp receives two awards at the annual conference of the German Communication Association (DGPuK)
For many years, communication and media research at the University of Bremen has distinguished itself by investigating the change to our society brought about by media, digitalization and currently their increasing drivenness by data. Now, this research has received two important accolades.
At this year’s annual conference of the German Communication Association (DGPuK), Andreas Hepp was awarded its Theory Prize and with it the first prize for a journal article in communication studies. A five-member jury honoured the book “The Mediated Construction of Reality” (2017, Polity Press) by Andreas Hepp and the British researcher Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Sciences). The book innovatively and originally builds on existing theories and develops a basis for an understanding of a society that is shaped by media, digitalization and datafication. In their monograph, Couldry and Hepp discuss the question of the profound role digital media play in shaping and changing the social world, the consequences which can arise from that, but also what this means normatively for human coexistence.
Andreas Hepp received the prize for the best article in communication studies as part of a debate surrounding his article “Kommunikationswissenschaft in datengetriebenen Zeiten” (“Communication studies in data-driven times”) which was published in the academic journal “Publizistik” in mid-2016. This article provoked a debate in the research community in which four other scholars participated who were also distinguished. In his article, Hepp argues in favour of an extension of the subject area of communication and media studies and for a much stronger application of digital methods, for instance, to research data traces that people leave behind online. Hepp pleads for an extension of the disciplinary perspective also towards the datafication of communication, i.e. its increasing digitalization and automatization. The award winning article triggered an intensive debate on the self-understanding of the discipline, which led to a special window on the future of communication studies at this year’s annual DGPuK conference.
Both award winning publications base significantly on joint theoretical and empirical research in the “Communicative Figurations” research network of the Universities of Bremen and Hamburg and Bremen’s Creative Research Unit of the same name which was supported by the University of Bremen’s institutional strategy “Ambitious and Agile” funded within the frame of the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and State Governments from 2013 to 2016.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp is speaker of the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) and led the Creative Research Unit “Communicative Figurations” (2013-2016). The ZeMKI bundles research activities at the University of Bremen in the area of media and communicative change, encompassing a broad range of cultural, social, organisational and technological context fields. The research institute is committed to interdisciplinary cooperation, integrating researchers from the areas of media and communication studies, information management, media education, film studies, religious studies, and history.
Couldry, Nick/Hepp, Andreas (2017): The Mediated Construction of Reality. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-8131-3 (Paperback), 290 pages, € 23,60
Hepp, Andreas (2016): Kommunikationswissenschaft in datengetriebenen Zeiten. In: Publizistik, 61(3), pp. 225-246, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11616-016-0263-y (Open Access).
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email: kramp@uni-bremen.de
Prof. Dr. Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz (University of Bremen, ZeMKI) gives lecture at the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris
The lecture takes place in the context of the deSignis conference “Médiations/Médiatisation” (organized by the Semiotic Society of Latin-American, the “Laboratoire Mondes Américaines” of the University of Lille and the Argentinian Embassy in Paris) and is entitled “(Re)Lire Eliseo Verón. Médiations et médiatisation. Deux concepts pour penser les Sciences de la Communication aujourd´hui”.
More information can be accessed here.
From December 8-9, 2016 the Bremen House of Science (Haus der Wissenschaft, Sandstr. 4/5, Bremen, Germany) hosts the international conference ‘Communicative Figurations’ on the interdependent transformation of communication, media, society and culture.
The ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen, organises the international conference in collaboration with the Hans-Bredow-Institute for Media Research, Hamburg and the SOCIUM, University 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 conference brochure can be downloaded here.
ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz gives a talk in Siegen
Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz will talk on the question “Still a ‘Public Sphere’? A Systematic-Historical View on Transparency and Responsibility as Communication Values” at the conference “Infrastructures of Publics — Publics of Infrastructures” on December 8, 2016 .
Further information can be accessed here.
ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Christine Lohmeier presents her research at the University of Amsterdam.
From December 3-5, 2016, the University of Amsterdam hosts an international conference on “Thinking through the future of memory”. The conference is also the inaugural event of the Memory Studies Association. Christine Lohmeier will talk on “Family memory in times of deep mediatization” on Monday, December 5.
Further information can be accessed here.
