• News

New Publication: Andreas Hepp on Figurations of Digital Futures in the Berliner Journal für Soziologie

As part of the newly released special issue “Refiguration or Transformation: The Reordering of the World Beyond Globalization” of the Berliner Journal für Soziologie, Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp (PI of ComAI project “Pioneer Communities”) has published an article. The piece, titled “Figurations of Digital Futures – or: Why We Need Media and Communication Research on Emergence”, discusses how the social sciences can more systematically include possible digital futures in the analysis of societal transformation processes.

Hepp argues that existing research has mainly focused on the consequences of established digital media and infrastructures. He advocates for media and communication research on emergence that systematically examines the creation of new media technologies and the associated imaginaries of future social life. The article provides both conceptual foundations and points of reference for an integrative research perspective.

From the abstract:

„The aim of this article is to contribute to a more systematic inclusion of digital futures—or, more precisely: various possible digital futures—in research on the refiguration of societies. A social-scientific examination of digital futures should be part of media and communication research on emergence. In order to make this connection tangible, the article examines in a first step how previous research on the global transformations of societies with digital media and their infrastructures has been dominated by a focus on “consequence” rather than “emergence”. However, if one broadens the view to emergence—as is argued in a second step—one is inevitably confronted with questions of the future, as it is a fundamental aspect of human agency in general. In a third step, this argument leads to a closer look at figurations of digital futures, which are understood in a twofold sense: on the one hand, as social figurations in which digital futures are produced, and on the other hand, as the figurations of human coexistence in the digital future imagined in the process. This conceptual clarification is finally condensed into a sketch of media and communication research on emergence.“

The article is available Open Access at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11609-025-00549-4