News (2)

We are happy to share that our lab member, Rebecca Scharlach, was invited to write a commentary on the paper "The dark side of public values in algorithmic systems".

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.

The recent security incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face has reignited the discussion about the safe use of powerful AI systems. In an interview with Horizont, Andreas Hepp analyzes the latest developments and explains their significance for research, society, and regulation.

The latest version of OpenQDA has been released. Users can now add and manage variables for their project materials (sources). This lays the groundwork for the upcoming implementation of cases and sets.

Since July 2026, Ananth Shreyas is a Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of Religion and Related Didactics at the University of Bremen, working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler within the ZeMKI Media and Religion Lab.

How can media outlets, universities, companies, and public institutions reduce their dependence on the major platform corporations? ZeMKI member Dr. Leif Kramp, together with co-author Dr. Stephan Weichert from the VOCER Institute for Digital Resilience, addresses this question in an op-ed for the taz.

A new article by Luisa Runge, Christian Katzenbach, and Miira Hill has just been published in Feminist Media Studies. Examining TikTok’s community guidelines and corporate communication, the study reveals how the platform's progressive narratives of empowerment often clash with ambiguous policies that obscure the structural dimensions of sexism.

Emilija Gagrčin (ZeMKI, GLaMS Lab) contributed to the 13th FILE – Forum on Intercultural Learning and Exchange, held by Fondazione Intercultura in Colle di Val d'Elsa on 13–15 November 2025 under the theme "Encouraging Value-Based Behaviors: From Pupils' Mobility to Civic Engagement."

The gamevironments Special Issue "Beyond Play" is out now! It features eight articles covering genre, neurodivergence, feminist gaming culture, streaming, YouTube videos, and digital diplomacy—reimagining gaming. Highlights include an introduction titled "Beyond Play: Towards a Non-Gaming-Centric Gaming Research" by ZeMKI members Christian Schwarzenegger, Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, and Karsten D. Wolf.

The Gamevironments Research Day is a workshop exclusively for early-stage researchers, graduate students and doctoral students. It welcomes research on media-centered approaches, perspectives of game developers and publishers, and viewpoints of gamers. The workshop provides a unique opportunity for participants to engage in discussions and debates about theoretical approaches for studying the intersection of religion, culture, and video gaming.

ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Andreas Breiter discusses the risks, but also the opportunities that AI systems can offer in the classroom in an interview with Lisa Duncan of the Weser-Kurier.

On 24 JulyZeMKI member Dr. Rieke Böhling and Dr. Berber Hagedoorn (University of Groningen, Netherlands) facilitate a workshop on the Dutch North Sea island Schiermonnikoog. The workshop is funded by a seed grant of the Hanse University Alliance and is organized in cooperation with the local cultural history association ’t Heer en Feer.