Communication and media are indispensable elements of society and interact with it: Only through communication can people form relationships with one another, and only through media can they maintain this communication across spatial or temporal distances and include groups of varying sizes. When communication practices or media structures and logics change, this therefore has a direct impact on our social interactions. At the same time, changes in media and communication are themselves always the result of social negotiation and social conditions.
The program area “Social Functions of Communication and Media” examines the conditions, processes, structures, and consequences of this interrelationship:
- How and when do communication and media promote individual and societal processes of orientation, opinion formation, and understanding?
- Where and why are communication and media, in their current form, obstructive or even dysfunctional for these processes?
- How do they affect individual awareness and shared knowledge, identity formation and cultural memory, collective decision-making, and democratic cohesion?
- And which societal notions, norms, interests, and constellations of actors shape the development of media offerings and communication technologies?
The program area comprises six research groups, each representing a different approach to these questions. They examine the functions of communication and media in society from various perspectives, taking an interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse approach, and frequently adopting a long-term (historical) perspective while focusing on moments of transformation. Working both individually and collaboratively, they address key scholarly questions and provide society with guidance in times of rapid change and multiple crises.
The following six research groups operate within Program Area 1:
