News (2)

ZeMKI Head Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp will deliver the keynote address at the international conference “Creative Communication and Empowerment,” which will take place on April 17 and 18 at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

On Friday, April 17, from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., ZeMKI member Dr. Rieke Böhling will present her current postdoctoral project in the Cultures of Media Production Theme Group at the Research Centre for Media and Journalism Studies as part of her collaboration with Dr. Berber Hagedoorn from the University of Groningen.

Together with Kevin Barth from Deutschlandfunk, ZeMKI member Dr. Philip Sinner discussed Milano Cortina d'Ampezzo 2026, focusing in particular on the great successes of media coverage and further processing from a communication and media studies perspective. The report was broadcast on Deutschlandfunk's Sport am Sonntag program.

For 2026, the ZeMKI Steering Committee has selected seven international visiting scholars as part of the Visiting Research Fellowship program. Each fellow will spend at least four weeks collaborating with selected ZeMKI Labs.

ZeMKI member Dr. Rieke Böhling is offering two workshops entitled “Your family, your history – try your hand at family research” for children aged 8-12 as part of the Children's University on March 25 and 26.

ZeMKI member Dr. Philip Sinner talks to journalist Leon Hütter on BremenNEXT's live radio show about the hype surrounding the successful series Heated Rivalry.

We are delighted that our ZeMKI member Hendrik Kühn successfully defended his dissertation entitled "Im Dialog mit Abwesenden" (In Dialogue with Absentees) on February 5, 2026.

At the beginning of this week, the ZeMKI Lab „Datafication and Mediatization“ came together for its annual, multi-day lab retreat at the educational center in Bad Zwischenahn. The retreat once again provided the lab members with ample time and opportunity to discuss current research and publication projects in a larger group, to exchange teaching experiences, and to receive valuable feedback on upcoming work.

A new article by ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp is being published as open access in a thematic issue of the International Journal of Communication (IJoC), edited by Christian Pentzold and Charlotte Knorr.

ZeMKI member Dr. Rieke Böhling and Dr. Berber Hagedoorn (University of Groningen, Netherlands) receive seed funding from the Hanse University Alliances’s Impuls Forschung program to hold two workshops – one on the North Sea island of Spiekeroog (Germany) and one on Schiermonnikoog (Netherlands). 

Under the title “Between Participation and Silencing—The Ambivalence of Online Discussions and Their Consequences,” the annual conference of the DGPuK's Reception and Impact Research Section will take place at the University of Klagenfurt from January 21 to 23, 2026.

As part of Special Issue #31 of the VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture, edited by ZeMKI member Rieke Böhling, among others, contributions on the topic of “Television and the Family” are being sought.