Communication History and Media Change

The lab understands itself as a transdisciplinary platform for research in media and communication history: The evolution of social communication as well as the variety of media dispositives and their appropriations can be researched and described only from different perspectives and a broad range of methods and sources. Subject of historical mediatization research in particular is the formation and evolution of various media and their interplay, the history of communication and the social transformation of the public sphere (also in inter-/transnational comparison). Research is conducted with an eye to research methods from historical content analysis and/or document analysis, also with regard to digital methods. The study of communication and media change is thereby connected with the intellectual history of communication, media and the public sphere, respectively the history of communication studies itself.

Members of the lab work on propaganda history, the evolution of transnational conference journalism and the history of international organizations like the League of Nations in interwar times. A further project and cooperation context is the acquisition of the "Research Atelier" funding line of the Franco-German University of Applied Sciences in 2020 together with colleagues from the Universities of Lyon (Prof. Dr. Sarah Cordonnier) and Mulhouse (Dr. Fabien Bonnet/Dr. Carsten Wilhelm) on the subject of: "Franco-German communication environments: science, digital culture and journalism. Transnational perspectives."

Founding members were Prof. Dr. Holger Böning and Prof. Dr. Inge Marszolek †.

Organisation of the yearly ZeMKI international conference 2021 together with the Institute for Newspaper Research (ZI) in Dortmund and the Section Communication History in the German Association for Communication Research (DGPuK), see:
https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/zemki/events/conferences/communication-history-of-international-organizations-and-ngos