- Project lead: Dr. Leif Kramp
Cooperation partner (co-lead): Dr. Stephan Weichert (VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience)
The research focuses on the conceptual foundations and empirical exploration of digital resilience in the context of the ongoing, far-reaching mediatisation of everyday social life and the proliferation of artificial intelligence in particular. The starting point is the observation that digital media use and media production conditions, under circumstances of constant crisis communication, accelerated platform logic and algorithmic mediation, place new demands on individuals, organisations and democratic publics.
The central question is how media users and media professionals remain capable of acting under these conditions. Digital resilience is not understood here merely as resilience, but as a multi-level concept that combines individual adaptability, organisational willingness to learn and societal agency. Among other things, the project examines phenomena such as news fatigue, mental exhaustion caused by constant negative reporting, ambivalent trust relationships towards digital information sources, and strategies for self-determined media use.
A second line of research focuses on the structural changes in journalistic work under AI conditions. It examines how editorial teams can assign responsibility, secure trust and shape relationships with their audience when research, production and distribution are increasingly pre-structured by algorithms.
A third line of research, currently in preparation, links these perspectives under the concept of AI empowerment. It analyses the psychosocial causes of resistance to AI in knowledge-based professions, the cultural dimensions of perceived loss of control, and the prerequisites for digital sovereignty in a public sphere shaped by algorithmic mediation.
Methodologically, the research focus combines quantitative representative surveys, qualitative interview studies and conceptual theoretical work. The aim is to refine digital resilience as an analytical concept whilst simultaneously making application-oriented contributions to media practice, education and media policy.
Publications:
- Kramp, L., & Weichert, S. (2024). Resilienz in der digitalen Gesellschaft. Mediennutzung in Zeiten von Krisen, Kriegen und KI. Köln: Halem.
- Kramp, L., & Weichert, S. (2026). KI-Resilienz im Journalismus. Framework und Handlungsempfehlungen für mehr Vertrauen, Verantwortung und digitale Souveränität. Hamburg: BoD.
- Kramp, L. (2026). Resilient Journalism After Platformization. AI, Precarity, and Policy Pathways for Germany in Comparative Context. ZeMKI Policy Paper No. 1, June 2026, https://zemki.uni-bremen.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ZeMKI-Policy-Paper-Kramp_2026_1.pdf
- Kramp, L., & Weichert, S. (2026). Lernbuch Digitale Resilienz. Wie Eltern und ihre Kinder souveräner im Umgang mit dem Internet werden. Köln: Halem.