ZeMKI Research Report 2017

We look back at a year in which various new research projects were started at ZeMKI. You can read about them in this report: Christine Lohmeier and Christian Pentzold founded the DFG-funded network for memory research in communication studies; Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz started the DFG project on the transnational communication history of the League of Nations; the BMBF-funded “MemoApp” project on media competence for mobile app-based working and learning, for which Stefan Welling is responsible; the BMBF project “Care Reflection Online” carried out by Karsten D. Wolf or the project “Tinder the City”, also funded by the BMBF and realized together with the Hans Bredow Institute and ifib, to develop an innovative mobile app for local news. Various other successful projects are also presented in this report as well as a selection of the numerous raining measures for early-career researchers at ZeMKI.

As the above shows, many new topics have been opened up across the ZeMKI labs. The area of digital methods should certainly be mentioned here, which plays just as much a role in memory research and the history of communication as in projects on current media technologies. Another important new area is “co-creation”, i.e. the involvement of users in software development processes. Research in computer science is combined with research in communication and media studies. Various projects in the field of applied research and research-based learning also stand for the intensified development of this area at the ZeMKI.

The first ZeMKI call for visiting research fellowships, which brought several international researchers from different countries and continents to ZeMKI where they can advance their projects in an interdisciplinary research context or conceive new projects, were started successfully in 2017. And then there are, the ZeMKI Media Talks, a series of events at which once a semester current questions of communication and media research are discussed with a prominent guest from media practice in a public symposium. This event was continued according to a new concept developed in cooperation with Radio Bremen.

Various other projects, publications, conferences and other activities are presented in this report. We hope it will provide an insight into the very active and broad-based research carried out in the various ZeMKI labs.

With this in mind, we hope you enjoy reading this research report.

The ZeMKI Research Report 2017 is available here.