Prototypes of social cohesion

• Duration: 2025 – 2026
• Project lead: Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp

Participating institutions: ZeMKI, University of Bremen, Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans Bredow Institute (HBI), Hamburg

Funding: Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC)

Facebook, X and TikTok promote radicalization and hate speech. Digital platforms and social media are therefore typically seen as problems when it comes to social cohesion. In contrast, this work package focuses on pioneer communities and alternative platform models. It examines the potential that digital platforms can have for social cohesion.

We are researching groups from the fields of “civic hacking”, “data activism”, “platform cooperativism” and “future journalism” that deal with digital media and infrastructures. What do these groups criticize about the existing use and regulation of digital technologies? What prototypical concepts are they developing for using digital platforms for social cohesion? What ideas of possible futures do they have?

The study focuses on the imaginations of pioneer communities, their practices and discourses. These prototypes of mediatized communitization have changed media practices and forms of participation more than almost any other group. Ideas of communitization were imagined in them long before they were technologically feasible. Many social media technologies first emerged from them.

The work package is based on an interdisciplinary media ethnographic design. By comparing Europe and the USA, we reconstruct the organizational models of the alternative platforms. In doing so, we draw on interviews, observations of events and internal documents. In a second step, we work out the associated ideas of social cohesion and visions of the future. In a third step, we conduct transfer-oriented future workshops with citizens in which the practical everyday potential of such visions of the future are discussed. We use art-based methods to test innovative methodological approaches. The aim is to pass on knowledge about innovative ideas of cohesion and to encourage people to participate in alternative platform models.

Publications:

• Hepp, Andreas. 2016. “Pioneer communities: Collective actors of deep mediatization.” In: Media, Culture & Society 38(6): 918-933.
• Hepp, Andreas. 2017. “Theory and empirically based theory development.” In: International encyclopedia of communication research methods, hrsg. v. Jörg Matthes, 1-9. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Hepp, Andreas. 2020. “The fragility of curating a pioneer community: Deep mediatization and the spread of the quantified self and maker movements.” In: International Journal of Cultural Studies 23(6): 932-950.
• Hepp, Andreas. 2022. „Jenseits der Disruption: Zum Lebenszyklus von Pioniergemeinschaften und ihrer Rolle beim Entstehen einer „digitalen Gesellschaft“.“ In: KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 74: 231-255.
• Hepp, Andreas. 2024. “Curators of digital futures: The life cycle of pioneer communities.” In: New Media & Society, Online First.
• Hepp, Andreas und Wiebke Loosen. 2021. “Pioneer journalism: Conceptualizing the role of pioneer journalists and pioneer communities in the organizational re-figuration of journalism.” In: Journalism 22(3): 577-595.
• Hepp, Andreas und Wiebke Loosen. 2022. “Beyond innovation: Pioneer journalism and the re-figuration of journalism.” In: The institutions changing journalism: Barbarians inside the gate, hrsg. v. Patrick Ferrucci und Scott A. Eldridge, 118-135. London: Routledge.
• Hepp, Andreas, Wiebke Loosen, Stephan Dreyer, Juliane Jarke, Sigrid Kannengießer, Christian Katzenbach, Rainer Malaka, Michaela Pfadenhauer, Cornelius Puschmann und Wolfgang Schulz. 2023. “ChatGPT, LaMDA and the hype around Communicative AI: The automation of communication as a field of research in media and communication studies.” In: Human-Machine Communication 6: 41-63.
• Hepp, Andreas, Anne Schmitz und Nathan Schneider. 2023. “Afterlives of the Californian Ideology: Tech movements, pioneer communities, and imaginaries of digital futures – An Introduction to the thematic issue.” In: International Journal of Communication 17: 4142-4160.
• Hepp, Andreas und Anne Schmitz. 2022. “The limits of the Maker ideology: local Makerspaces, experimental practices, and COVID-19.” In: Continuum 36(2): 199-213.