Prof. Dr. Eva Quante-Brandt
Greetings
Ladies and gentlemen,
Once again this year, the organisers of the Bremen University Talks have chosen a topic of great socio-political importance and urgency. In a nutshell, it is about how the future of media, communication and information is changing our society.
Media, communication and information are currently one of the most dynamically developing areas. Many communication phenomena that characterise everyday life today, such as the smartphone and the possibility of always being on, could not have been foreseen to this extent a decade ago. The same applies to the current discussion about big data and digital footprints, i.e. the many traces we leave behind with digital media. There is every indication that the future of media, communication and information will also be highly dynamic. On the one hand, it is important to recognise the potential - such as new networking opportunities - but also the considerable risks. The two are often closely linked.
The transformation of media, communication and information affects the individual as well as our community life and the organisations in which we live and work. It is a very comprehensive phenomenon and must be understood as such.
At the same time, the disruption we are confronted with no longer affects just a single medium that constitutes innovation. It is not simply about the World Wide Web or the mobile phone. The disruption can be seen in the fact that media play a role in almost everything we do nowadays. The scientific keyword for this is mediatisation, i.e. the comprehensive penetration of the most diverse areas of culture and society with technical communication and information media.
The field of research has developed just as dynamically as its subject area. For example, the German Research Foundation is funding research groups on "Political Communication in the Online World" or the priority programme "Mediatised Worlds" coordinated in Bremen. The BMBF has just launched an initiative to promote research on digitalisation in the humanities and social sciences. There are also a large number of comparable programmes internationally.
The socially relevant question of what the comprehensive transformation of media, communication and information means, especially in its cross-media character, and which mechanisms of transformation exist here, has not yet been recognised in its complexity.
Previous research has tended to focus on individual phenomena, often driven by the latest new medium. To date, there are no theories or models for describing and explaining such transformation processes in a comprehensive manner. This is mainly due to the fact that research in the various fields has not been sufficiently brought together and communication and media studies are not yet working closely enough with other disciplines. But it is precisely against the background of the comprehensive social change associated with the transformation of media, communication and information that interdisciplinary research is necessary, in which communication and media studies play an important integrative role.
It is clear that such an endeavour represents a comprehensive challenge, not only for communication and media studies, but also for other social sciences and humanities that deal with media, communication and information, as well as for computer science as a technical design subject that must cooperate broadly with the social sciences. All these interdisciplinary co-operations must meet on an equal footing if fruitful research is to emerge from them.
Bremen is a very special location in this respect:
From the very beginning, communication and media studies was very broadly based in its co-operation with cultural and social sciences.
Bremen has a computer science department in which individual researchers have long been interested in social science perspectives.
Ten years ago, both came together in today's ZeMKI, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen.
We also have the Institute for Information Management Bremen (ifib) as a non-university research institute in the state of Bremen, which specialises in the use, benefits and management of information technology and the integration of digital media in the education sector, for example. This institute also works at the interface between computer science and the social sciences.
The ZeMKI and ifib are firmly anchored in one of the University of Bremen's six research centres: Minds, Media, Machines.
The strength of the Bremen location is therefore that communication and media research is highly interdisciplinary from the outset and that communication and media studies is a bridging subject that links the social and cultural sciences with computer science.
At the same time, communication and media studies in Bremen has a broad international profile. It is regarded as one of the leading locations for mediatisation research, i.e. the area of communication and media research that deals with the increasing penetration of culture and society by the media.
The dynamic development of communication and media studies in Bremen over the last ten years shows just how effective this profiling is: The subject has grown from one professorship - supported by a development fund from the Excellence Initiative, among other things - to five professorships. A further junior professorship on media society with a focus on digitalisation is currently being filled.
Bremen's Communication and Media Studies department is currently coordinating the "Mediatised Worlds" priority programme, the only DFG priority programme dedicated to the topic of media and communication change, and is also involving outstanding sociologists - a bridge that is more than necessary. In tough competition and in an international review process, the ZeMKI also acquired a Creative Unit from the Excellence Initiative, which has now been working for two years on what an empirical-conceptual approach to research must look like if one wants to capture the social influence of changes in media and communication across all media.
A long-term co-operation and partnership has been established with the Hans Bredow Institute (HBI) at the University of Hamburg, one of the oldest independent academic research institutions in the field of media and communication.
Together, the Bremen Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research and the Hamburg Hans Bredow Institute have now developed a concept for a special research area that aims to record the changes in media, communication and information and their influence on society across all media for the first time. The full proposal is to be submitted to the German Research Foundation shortly. And we all hope that we will be able to celebrate the establishment of this SFB in just over a year's time.
Regardless of the outcome, one thing is already clear: a programme has been developed here that will have a lasting impact on the future of research into media, communication and information, both nationally and internationally. The opening lecture by Prof. Dr Sonia Livingstone from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) at these Bremen University Talks is a prime example of this. She is one of the most renowned international communication and media scholars and the only specialist academic to be awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), an honour she received in 2014 "for services to children and child internet safety".
Ladies and gentlemen, I am very much looking forward to the results of your conference.