ZeMKI-News

From September 8 to 11, the 11th Conference of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) will take place in Brno (Czech Republic). The conference’s theme is “Paths, Connections, and Futures.” Numerous ZeMKI members will present their research.

On August 14, 2026, ZeMKI member Dr. Adio-Adet Dinika appeared as a guest on the 74th episode of Rebecca Mbaya’s interview series “The African Innovators Series.” The title of the interview is “Dr. Adio-Adet Dinika on the Labor AI Refuses to Name.”

ZeMKI member Dr. Adio-Adet Dinika was a guest on Dr. Anita Nowak’s podcast “Purposeful Empathy,” discussing the topic “The Hidden Exploitation (and Trauma) Behind AI.”

The ECREA European Doctoral Summer School is currently taking place from August 3 to 9 at Södertörn University in Stockholm. ZeMKI member Prof. Christian Schwarzenegger is participating as a lecturer and discussant. In addition to providing feedback on several European dissertation projects, he is also offering a workshop on working with qualitative data. Patrick Frey and Luisa Runge are presenting their own dissertation projects and receiving feedback from international experts.

On the afternoon of 8 July 2026, members of ZeMKI gathered at Linzer Straße 4 for the ZeMKI Research Day 2026. This internal event format provides a forum for presenting ongoing projects from the eleven ZeMKI Labs, discussing methodological issues and bringing together perspectives across the boundaries of the individual Labs.

On 8 July 2026, the ZeMKI Research Day at the Linzer Straße 4 site segued directly into the ZeMKI Summer Party. Following the day’s academic programme, the discussions moved outdoors and continued there in an informal setting.

This week the AI PAN-AFRICANISM consortium gathered in Bremen to kick-off a joint research and advocacy initiative on Pan-African AI governance.

In Cambridge, Christian will contribute to the CGHR research theme "Global Experiences of Algorithmic Governance," building on his long-standing work on how technologies both shape and are shaped by discourses and regulations.

As part of the event “Who Is Making Generative AI the ‘Inevitable’ Technology of the Future?”, ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach will give a presentation in English on the social and political shaping of generative AI.

Prof. Christian Katzenbach participated in the RAIN Film Festival in Barcelona. Organized by Universitat Pompeu Fabra, the international festival is dedicated to AI-generated cinema and a meeting point for research, creation and critical thinking and takes place from 14 to 17 June.

ZeMKI is taking part in the University of Bremen’s Open Campus 2026 today. Under the motto ‘Opening up worlds – sharing knowledge’, the university is offering insights into research, study programmes and academic projects on campus.

As part of the completed DFG-funded “Imaginaries of AI” project, the article “Who’s driving the AI hype in its formative phase? A longitudinal analysis of stakeholders in the US and German AI discourse on Twitter 2012–2021”, written by Dr. Vanessa Richter, Dr. Daria Dergacheva, Vasilisa Kuznetsova and Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach, got published in AI and Society.