Researcher Irene Broer has successfully defended her dissertation.
Irene Broer presented the findings of her four years of research in the HBI library in front of colleagues, friends and her family who had traveled from the Netherlands. “Science Communication in Flux” is the title of her thesis. In this work, she examined new communication intermediaries in the field of tension between science and journalism. A central part of the research involved spending several weeks in the editorial office of the Science Media Center Germany (SMC) in Cologne, during which Irene Broer gained an insight into the work of editors as a participant observer.
In the five articles comprising her cumulative dissertation, she describes the working routines of the Science Media Center Germany, the ruptures in these routines and the various brokering roles that this organisation took on between science and journalism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conceptually, she proposes the study of science communication as a communicative figuration and offers cultural anthropological perspectives on hybrid newsroom ethnography as a method.
The presentation was followed by a discussion with the commission, consisting of Uwe Hasebrink, Simone Rödder (Universität Hamburg) and Judith Möller as the chair. The committee was so impressed by Irene Broer’s presentation and her ability to convey her research that they awarded the defence the distinction of “summa cum laude”, with an overall grade of “magna cum laude”.
Congratulations!