The current transformation of media and communication is also a challenge for sustainability and the good life. This is not only about ecological issues, for example, in the sense that the energy requirements and environmental impacts of the infrastructures of digital media are immense. At the same time, however, it is a question of how far-reaching mediatization and digital society are to be shaped so that they enable a successful life for all people.

Such questions, which are certainly also normative, connect many of the projects that are realised at the ZeMKI Labs. Beyond dealing with ELSI (Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of Technologies), the perspective here is directed towards the overall social dynamics of communication. Here, “good life” is understood as a bridging concept to bring together different empirical and theoretical normative questions. The “good life” thus refers less to questions of individual happiness or prosperity, but rather to the functions that communication fulfils for society. In this context, research at ZeMKI addresses questions of social inclusion, media and AI governance based on democratic principles, the common good, the ethics of care, design and data justice, and the role of digital media and infrastructures for various questions of sustainability.

At the ZeMKI, this is taken up in the context of normative reflection on empirical research. In particular, the focus is on how digital communication and its infrastructures are negotiated by different social actors and appropriated in different social domains. The strength of the ZeMKI is that it can approach this from an interdisciplinary perspective, with the aim of contributing to the discussion on the normative foundations of digital society and its media.