20 Years into the Future: What is our vision of media, data, and society?

• Datum: 22. October 2025 – 24. October 2025
• Location: Bremen City

20th Anniversary Conference

20 Years into the Future:
What is our vision of media, data, and society?

Keynote Speakers

Conference subject

Media and communication research has traditionally focused on the present, often asking: What are the consequences of each “new” medium? How do digital media and their infrastructures impact contemporary cultures and societies? With this conference, however, we aim to shift the perspective—from analyzing present-day impacts to envisioning future possibilities. What can we learn from the current mediatization and datafication of society to imagine possible futures? What roles might media discourses, technologies, and practices play in ongoing and future societal transformations?

In raising these foundational questions, the conference is broadly situated within the fields of media, communication and information research. Topics may include:

•  the role of media discourses, technologies, and practices in narrating and shaping the future;
• the importance of media policy and governance in building better futures;
• recent technological developments such as communicative AI and their potential role for future media environments;
• ways in which our narratives of the past, media history, and archeology shape our imaginaries of the future;
• digital gaming and emerging forms of entertainment;
• future media-related challenges for future sustainability and quality of life;
• and methodologies in media and communication research that address emerging media-related developments from a forward-looking perspective.

With discussion topics like these, the ZeMKI’s 20th anniversary conference is not about speculative forecasting but is grounded in media and communication research. We aim to explore long-term trends emerging from today’s media-related transformations and reflect on our visions of the future.

The conference programme is going to be published soon here.

Participation is free of charge. Register via e-mail: zemki-futures@uni-bremen.de

Download the call for abstracts (closed) as a PDF file.

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Conference program (Download)

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

19:00-21:00

Get Together

Thursday, October 23, 2025

09:00-09:30

Welcome Notes

• Jutta Günther, President, University of Bremen
• Andreas Hepp, Speaker ZeMKI &
  Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, Vice Speaker ZeMKI

09:30-10:00

Keynote 1

José van Dijck: How to achieve digital sovereignity in Europe?
Chair: Andreas Hepp

11:00-12:15

Panel: Disinformation and Conspiracies in the Digital Age: Narratives, Technologies, and Publics
Chair: Christian Katzenbach

• Marília Gehrke, Eedan Amit-Danhi: Gendered disinformation as violence: Proposing a comprehensive approach to digital discourse analysis
• Maham Sufi: Journalism in the age of deepfakes: The challenge of AI-driven visual disinformation in Pakistan
• Ruth Garland: Disinformation and the people
• Lars de Wildt, Kamilė Grusauskaitė, Matthias De Bondt, Stef Aupers: “Paranoid futures”: Conspiracy-theoretical boundary work across social media platforms

11:00-12:15

Panel: Knowledge in Transition: AI, Journalism, and Cultural Futures in the Digital Age
Chair: Cornelius Puschmann

• Antonia Eichenauer: It could be different. Metaphor analysis of metajournalistic discourse about AI
• Jessica Kunert, Marie Röthlingshöfer, Paul Koitie, Nadja Schaetz, Nancy Booker, Juliane Lischka: Comparing media innovation systems for AI adoption in journalism
• Jeannine Teichert, Dorothee M. Meister, Gudrun Oevel: Into the future – science communication with artificial intelligence
• Tilo Grenz, Paul Eisewicht: The unruly digital. Transitive knowledge cultures and the ephemerality of order in digital ecosystems
• Ceyda Yolgormez: Abundant intelligences: An indigenous future of AI

11:00-12:15

Panel: Media, Education and Parenting: Shaping Inclusive Futures Across Generations and Interfaces
Chair: Michael Viertel

• Elke Höfler, Katharina Raid, András Batkai, Jana Groß Ophoff: Challenging gender bias in education: How past narratives shape future imaginaries
• Çiğdem Bozdağ: Inclusivity and diversity in future media education in schools
• Jannis Androutsopoulos: Online-offline nexus: Meaning-making at the interfaces of physical and virtual (inter)action
• Katrin Potzel: Parenting of the future

12:15-13:45

Lunch Break

13:45-15:00

Panel: Exploring, Shaping, and Sensing the Digital Society: Perspectives on Communication, AI, and Experience
Chair: Delia González de Reufels

• Mirko Tobias Schäfer, Karin van Es, Iris Muis: Immerse, investigate & intervene. Making research actionable for shaping the digital society
• Hendrik Heuer: Co-creating social media
• Peter Lunt: The felt Experience of atmosphere: Implications for audience research
• Hossein Derakhshan: Rethinking algorithm/AI studies: Challenges of researching algorithms and the case for renewing ethnomethodology
• Tamara Witschge, Maaike van Cruchten: How to research the unspoken and invisible: Interrogating myths about AI

13:45-15:00

Panel: Envisioning Futures of Media, Communication, and Innovation: Cultural Narratives, AI, and Socio-Technical Change
Chair: Winfried Pauleit

• Göran Bolin: Communicative AI and communicative modes across social contexts
• Jeffrey Wimmer: The future as a laboratory or as entertainment? The multiple roles of science fiction visions.
• Olivier Driessens: Adding the future to create a future for research on media-related socio-cultural change and continuity
• Victoria O’Meara, Stephanie Hill: Data and the future of value in the creator economy
• Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed, Marlen Komorowski, Máté Fodor, Jess Hoare: Innovation as the path to ensuring a sustainable media sector

13:45-15:00

Panel: Shaping the Future of Journalism: AI, Imagination, and Systemic Change
Chair: Stephanie Geise

• Maximilian Eder, Annika Sehl: All those bright, shiny things? The future of local journalism in the AI age
• Alexander Wasdahl, Ramesh Srinivasan: Generative AI and the future of journalism: Insights from news workers and experts
• Frank Harbers, Rik Smit: “We have to do something with…”: The performative power of socio-technical imaginaries of digital technologies in shaping journalism’s future
• Bette Dam, Dhrumil Mehta, Sarah Grey Gotfredsen, Sthavir Murthy: UNHEARD: Leveraging AI to reduce future systemic bias in journalism

15:00-15:30

Coffee Break

15:30-16:45

Panel: Cities, (country) maps and communication: navigating the paths to our future
Chair: Philip Sinner

• Matthias Berg: Living and communicating in the city of the future
• Berk Alkoç: Exploring the invisible city: How Google Maps’ AI-powered recommendations and gamified platforms reinforce power dynamics and shape urban narratives
• Maren Hartmann, Justine Humphry: Glorious videos, precarious lives: homelessness and #vanlife
• Stina Bengtsson: Navigare necesse est: The concept of navigation in media studies, and what it tells us about our contemporary and future media culture
• Christian Greiffenhagen, Shan Shan Li: Researchers in traffic: Methodological challenges of video-recording human-machine communication ‘on the move’

15:30-16:45

Panel: Deliberation and Polarization in the Digital Public Sphere: Journalism, AI, and the Struggle for Democratic Discourse
Chair: Cornelius Puschmann

• Hilke Brockmann, Ivan Yamshchikov: AI-mediated discourse: Mitigating polarization through constructive dialogue
• Axel Bruns, Katharina Esau, Kateryna Kasianenko, Tariq Choucair, Vish Padinjaredath Suresh: Diagnosing destructive polarisation in public discourse: The practice mapping framework
• Michael Brüggemann, Hendrik Meyer, Mike Farjam, Anamaria Dutceac Segesten: How journalism fuels discursive polarization
• Giovanna Mascheroni, Simone Tosoni; Fausto Colombo: Talking politics with communicative AI: New opportunities or challenges for democratic discourse?

15:30-16:45

Panel: AI and the Future of Education: Rethinking Writing, Machines, and the Academic Imagination
Chair: Karsten D. Wolf

• David Gunkel: Does writing have a future?
• Gergely Ferenc Lendvai: ChatGPT in academic writing – a scientometric analysis of today’s and tomorrow’s issues
• Maria Teresa Cruz: Imagining the university in the age of the universal machine
• Andreas Schellewald: Disruptive consolidation? Reflections on human-machine communication as media engagement paradigm
• Lissa Holloway-Attaway: Troubling futures, sounding off, and engaging non-human interactive audio-based media

17:00-18:00

Keynote 2

Cristian Vaccari: Visions of political participation in the digital age
Chair: Kerstin Radde-Antweiler

19:00-0:00

Festive Conference Dinner

Friday, October 24, 2025

09:30-10:30

Keynote 3

Nick Couldry: Media and the corporatization of everything
Chair: Kerstin Radde-Antweiler

11:00-12:15

Panel: Love, Hate and Algorithms: Intimacy, Violence, and Emotional Futures in Mediated Worlds
Chair: Karsten D. Wolf

• Nicola Döring: The future of media sexuality – between algorithms, agents, and autonomy
• Ira Solomatina: The future of mediated intimacy? Examining the politics and industry of AI-generated romance
• Mark Deuze, Laura Glitsos: Media love as antidote for the synthetic mediation of everything
• Seda Gökçe Turan: Machine algorithms and cyberbullying: Unveiling risks and harnessing solutions
• Anthony Enns: Weaponizing the mind: Military applications of parapsychology and neurocybernetics

11:00-12:15

Panel: Playing the Future / The Future as play: Games, Virtual Worlds, and Speculative Designs for Social Change
Chair: Kerstin Radde-Antweiler

• Anne Kustritz: Tabletop AI: Playing with the future
• Sarah Ambec: Archiving the experience of an MMORPG: Future challenges in preserving online worlds and their communities
• Gaia Amadori: Gaming for a sustainable future: Exploring the role of ecogames and gamevironments
• Xenia Zeiler: Video games for change in times of deep social and technological transformations: Positive visions of the future
• Javzmaa Jadamba: “If only” from enjoyful games to effective work: Exploring the managerial expectations of immersive virtual reality technology within organizational practice

11:00-12:15

Panel: Artifacts and Futures: Mapping, Narrating, and Designing Socio-Digital Imaginaries
Chair: Paola Lopez

• Peter Gentzel: Worldviews in 20 years – Maps between platform capitalism and civil society criticism
• Julie Lüpkes, Anne Schmitz: Building digital tools, imagining digital futures – A media ethnographic analysis of the development process of two software tools
• Hans-Ulrich Wagner: From metahistory to metafuture: What current narratives about the past tell us about the future
• Annekatrin Bock, Dan Verständig: Programmed futures: Revisiting the promise of education and the reproduction of social inequality

12:15-13:45

Lunch Break

13:45-15:00

Panel: Digital Publics in Transition: Political Participation, Social Platforms, and AI-Mediated Communication
Chair: Stephanie Geise

• Maria F. Grub, Antonia M. Wurm, Julian Kauk: From gaming to government: Twitch as a new platform for political discourse in Germany
• Johanna Raphaela Wahl, Martina Schiebel: New visibilities, new forms of protest? Social media, visual communication, and the transformation of political participation
• Udo Göttlich, Felix Krell: “Like IRL”: Real-life interaction order in social virtual reality
• Thomas Steinmaurer: Towards an ambivalent future of communication. Dynamics of AI, technocultural imaginaries and critical transformations.

13:45-15:00

Panel: Past Feelings and Future Memories: Digital Archives, Affective Technologies, and the Politics of Remembering
Chair: Christian Schwarzenegger

• Nancy Salem: The future feels digital: Sociotechnical imaginaries in the museum
• Christine Lohmeier, Rieke Böhling: Tamagotchis, NFTs, and deep nostalgia: Thinking towards the future of mediated remembering and forgetting
• Susan Aasman: What happened to keeping everything?
• Devina Srivastava: The algorithmic archive: AI, media archeology, and the future of cultural memory
• Lauren S. Berliner, Kelli Moore: Clouded histories, mediated futures: Digital obscura, the slave plantation, and data farms

13:45-15:00

Panel: Platform Governance and the Futures of Regulation: Norms, Civil Society, and the Politics of Control
Chair: Christian Katzenbach

• Claire Stravato Emes: Beyond self-regulation: Civil society as the missing element in platform governance
• Nathalie Van Raemdonck, Trisha Meyer: Shaping collective user self-moderation; the role of social norms in platform regulation.
• Julian A. Morgan: Platform governmentality: At the boundaries of imaginable futures
• Elinor Carmi: How to regulate future tech: The human data good practice
• Flavia Durach: Shaping the future governance of information ecosystems: Insights from disinformation research and policy implementation

15:00-15:30

Coffee Break

15:30-16:45

Panel: Visions, Ideologies, and Ecologies: Reimagining Media Futures in the Age of AI and Data
Chair: Christian Schwarzenegger

• Jens Schröter, Jan Groos: Towards an ecology of planning media
• Stefan Baack: Controlling robots: Generative AI and the evolving sensemaking of the web
• Nikola Mlađenović: Austro-Hungarian ideology: Deconstruction of californian ideology
• Leah A. Lievrouw: Mining and recombining? Visions of media, data and society to 2050

15:30-16:45

Panel: Contested Futures: Identity, Belief, and Belonging in the Digital Transformation of Culture
Chair: Andreas Hepp

• Hubert Knoblauch, Silke Steets: The refiguration of cyberspace
• Friedrich Krotz: Extended capitalism versus symbolically negotiated self-realization: The digital transformation between utopia and dystopia
• Stef Aupers: Re-enchantment 2.0? AI and the technological future of the religious past
• Gregory Price Grieve: Mediaseeds: The future of media, religion, and spirituality in a fragmented world
• Scott A Ellis: Harnessing masculine identity as suicide prevention – the intersection of mediatised cultural dissonance: Men’s (mental) health in the barber shop, the community support group, and the bedroom.

15:30-16:45

Panel: Activism Reimagined: Digital Personas, Propaganda, and Political Expression in the Platform Age
Chair: Patrick Zerrer

17:00-18:00

Keynote 4

Alenda Y. Chang: [Title to be announced]
Chair: Andreas Hepp

18:00-21:00

Farewell Party

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Travel

The scientific conference will take place entirely at locations in Bremen’s city center:

• The Haus der Wissenschaft Bremen (HdW) at Sandstraße 4/5, 28195 Bremen
• In the Kassenhalle in the Forum am Domshof at Domshof 26, 28199 Bremen

Both locations are within walking distance of each other (approx. 5 minutes, 250 meters).

The conference dinner on Thursday evening will take place at Frölichs restaurant, Faulenstraße 69, 28195 Bremen.

The location of the get-together on Wednesday evening before the start of the conference will be announced later.

Public Transport

Bremen Central Station is centrally located in the city center and is connected to the public transport network (BSAG) by bus and streetcar. The stops near the Kassenhalle in the Forum am Domshof are:

Streetcar & bus: Schüsselkorb (lines 4, 6, 8, 24, 25); Obernstraße (lines 2, 3); Domsheide (lines 3, 2, 4, 6, 8, 24, 25).

Car or Intercity Bus

The central bus station is located in the center of Bremen, right next to Bremen Central Station.

Please note when arriving by car: We do not have our own parking lot. The surrounding parking garages can be used for a fee.

via the Airport

City Airport is well connected by the BSAG streetcar line 6. The journey to the city center takes 11 minutes, to the university it takes 36 minutes (streetcar 6 in the direction of “Universität” to the stop “Bremen Universität/Zentralbereich”).

Accommodation

Bremen has a wide range of accommodation options near the main train station and the airport – Bremen has almost 30 hotels in the city center alone. You can find an overview here.

Radisson Blu Hotel Bremen

Böttcherstr. 2
28195 Bremen
Book Now

H+ Hotel Bremen

Wachtstraße 27-29
28195 Bremen
Book Now

B&B Hotel Bremen-City

Findorffstraße 28-32
28215 Bremen
Book Now

Hotel Atlantic Universum

Wiener Straße 4
28359 Bremen
Book Now

Hotel Ibis Budget (at Main Station)

Bahnhofsplatz 41B
28195 Bremen
Book Now