ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research

In June 2020, the highly anticipated sequel to “The Last of Us” game was released. Within hours of its release, the game’s Metascore dropped to 3.3, while previous reviews from journalistic media had accumulated to a score of 95. What had happened? – The common reading of this “review-bombing” event is that players, unhappy with (…)

Alex Krause joined the lab ‘Datafication and Mediatization’ at ZeMKI in April 2024 as a research assistant for the project ‘molo.news: validation of a relational platform for urban publicity’. Prior to this, he completed his B.A. (2019) and M.A. (2023) in Cultural Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg. His focus was on cultural change through the (…)

Prof. Dr. Axel Bruns (Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, AUS) will be a guest in Bremen on 30 April 2024 and will give a lecture entitled “AI as Research Assistant: Upscaling Content Analysis to Identify Patterns of Polarization in the News”. The lecture will kick off the ComAI Lecture Series in the summer semester 2024. (…)

On 26 April 2024, ZeMKI member Dr Philip Sinner and the CoKoMeV team will give a presentation entitled “The communicative figuration of mediatized grassroot sports. Communicative strategies of Austrian and German sports clubs in response to the Covid-19 crisis”. The conference will take place from 25 to 27 April 2024 at TU Darmstadt. The conference (…)

Selim Başoğlu is a research associate and a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) since April 2024. Currently, he teaches introductory courses at the University of Bremen while also taking part in several research projects. In addition, he has been a guest researcher at the University of Oslo, Psychology (…)

ZeMKI member Dr. Anke Offerhaus was concordantly elected Dean of Academic Studies in Faculty 9. She now joins the dean’s office of Prof. Dr. Borchers and will continue her teaching activities in the ZeMKI degree programs as before. We congratulate Dr. Offerhaus on her election and wish her much joy and success in her new (…)

The Call for Papers for the 2024 International Conference of the DGPuK (German Communication Association) Visual Communication Section on “Generative Images – Generative Imageries: Challenges of Visual Communication (Research) in the Age of AI” was recently published. The conference will take place from November 20-22, 2024 at the University of Bremen and is supported by (…)

ZeMKI member Dr. Stephanie Seul will give a lecture entitled “Writing Women into the Historical Narrative of War Reporting: Avis Waterman, “The Times” Correspondent on the Italian Front During the First World War” at the conference “Rethinking Our Communicative Pasts: Reparatory and Radical Perspectives” at Loughborough University in London on April 26, 2024 from 2 (…)

On Thursday, April 25, 2024, a public roundtable on the United Nations Global Digital Compact will take place at 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the House of Science in Bremen. The Global Digital Compact is currently being negotiated by the UN member states; a first draft text was published in early April. The roundtable is (…)

Professor Kerstin Radde-Antweiler explores climate change in relation to video games and gaming practices, analyzing discussions on environmental games and their narratives. Despite the prominence of climate change themes in games, her research reveals a lack of discussions about their content and connections to real-world events on gaming forums compared to other media platforms. However, (…)

ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp, together with Göran Bolin, Andrea L. Guzman and Wiebke Loosen, has published a special issue on “Mediatization and Human Machine Communication” in the journal Human-Machine Communication. This issue includes a selection of five articles that were submitted via a call for papers last year. The editorial provides an overview (…)

The ZeMKI is continuing its series of research seminars this semester. Five communication and media scholars from Finland, Italy, Germany and Sweden have been invited to give an insight into their research. The lectures: Dr. Matti Nelimarkka (University of Helsinki, Finland): Navigating the Visual Turn in Digital Media: 
Methodologies and Challenges for Visual Big Data (…)

Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach and Dr. Paloma Viejo Otero from the “Platform Governance, Media and Technology” Lab at the University of Bremen in collaboration with Leipzig University member Prof. Dr. Christian Pentzold have published a new open access article in the Human-Machine Communication Journal titled: “Smoothing Out Smart Tech’s Rough Edges: Imperfect Automation and the (…)

ZeMKI member Dr. Dennis Redeker (member of the Platform Governance, Media, and Technology Lab) organizes an exhibition of science comics at the Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen. The communication of scientific methods and findings to the general public has been breaking new ground for some years now. This now includes media formats that were previously (…)

On Wednesday, 17.04.2024, Bremen’s Kommunalkino CITY 46 will host a program of experimental films and videos, curated and introduced by Christine Rüffert. The program is part of the ongoing curatorial series “film:art”, which exhibits films between art and cinema: A cooperation between the Kommunalkino and the University of Bremen. In its 100th edition, it presents (…)

This year, the ZeMKI welcomes a total of four Visiting Research Fellows as part of its Visiting Researcher Program. From over 85 applications, the steering committee of the Center for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen selected five researchers who will work together with two ZeMKI labs in interdisciplinary research for (…)

The realization of the project “We The (Social) Media: Social Media by and for Social Movements” has officially started on November 15th. It is being realized through intensive interdisciplinary collaboration with doctoral student Anna Ricarda Luther (ifib), Prof. Haunss (SOCIUM), Prof. Geise (ZeMKI), Prof. Heuer and Prof. Breiter (both ifib). The project is part of (…)

ZeMKI is represented with a contribution at the “ESA 16th Conference of the European Sociological Association” in Porto. This year’s ESA theme is “Tension, Trust and Transformation.” Luisa Runge (M2C Institute for Applied Media Research, Bremen University of Applied Sciences) and Miira Hill (DCID) have qualified for the Science and Technology Track of the conference (…)

As part of the lecture series “Aktuelle mediensoziologische Forschungen” Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp will give a lecture on “Auf dem Weg zur digitalen Gesellschaft: Über die Mediatisierung der sozialen Welt” on 15. April 2024 at Bielefeld University. To the event Abstract: If you take a closer look at the term “digital society”, you will notice (…)

ZeMKI member Dr. Dom Ford has been invited to give a talk at the University of Regensburg on ‘A World to Escape to: Gameworlds as Otherworlds in Datafied Society’ at the symposium ‘Videogames as Folkworlds: Nationalism – Democracy – Sustainability’, 11–12 April. About the event: Funded by the Vielberth Foundation and sponsored by the Leibniz (…)

ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler is currently a Research Fellow at UNC Greensboro. Since last year, UNCG has established an E-Sports Center (https://esports.uncg.edu/), which offers study programs as well as research on the topic of digital gaming. During her three-month stay, she will collaborate with the Network for the Cultural Study of Videogaming (https://cas.uncg.edu/ncsv). The stay (…)

ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach travels to the Representation of the State of Lower Saxony to the European Union in Brussels. He is a speaker in a panel discussion on the role of platforms in the 2024 European elections. The event will take place on April 09, 2024 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (…)