The first ComAI Lecture of the semester will take place on November 4, 2026. On Wednesday, Prof. Dr. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen from Cardiff University (UK) will speak on the topic “Boutique Media and the Challenges of News Production in an Age of Algorithmic Platform Governance”. The event starts at 6:30 p.m. and will take place at the (…)

We are happy to announce the publication of a new paper by our colleagues from the project “Political Discourse: ComAI and Deliberative Quality” in the ComAI research unit, Patrick Frey and Cornelius Puschmann (ZeMKI, University of Bremen), and Smita Bhattacharya and Gregor Wiedemann (Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut), titled „Can AI Gauge Deliberative (…)

The latest episode of BredowCast, the podcast of the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI), features our research unit. It was recorded around the ComAI Summer Retreat on 5–6 October and the subsequent Summer School from 7 to 9 October at the HBI in Hamburg, where researchers from all nine projects came together. (…)

For the 10th HumAIn Talks at the University of Oslo, ZeMKI Speaker Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp will give a talk on Silicon Valley, pioneer communities, and AI futures this coming Friday, October 23.  About the Talk Where do Silicon Valley’s visions of the AI future come from? A superficial answer to this question is: from (…)

Date: 20. January 2027 Time: 18:30 Street: Domshof 26, 28195 Bremen (Universität Bremen) Location: Forum im Domshof Room: Kassenhalle Abstract Shared matters of concern are fundamental to democratic life. Publics do not simply exist; they form around problems, controversies and consequences that come to matter. As Marres succinctly puts it: “no issue, no public.” But what happens when the conditions (…)

Date: 9. December 2026 Time: 18:30 Street: Domshof 26, 28195 Bremen (Universität Bremen) Location: Forum im Domshof Room: Kassenhalle Abstract Can a robot teach a class? Can a chatbot earn a student’s trust? For over a decade, our research has put machines in the teacher’s chair: a bot answering health questions on Twitter, a telepresence robot delivering a business lecture, (…)

Date: 25. November 2026 Time: 18:30 Street: Domshof 26, 28195 Bremen (Universität Bremen) Location: Forum im Domshof Room: Kassenhalle Abstract In this talk, I describe and contextualize so-called “AI” by addressing, then quickly moving on from, its origins, technological underpinnings and specificities and turn to its deployment and rhetorical social and political dimensions and functions. For that, I introduce the (…)

Date: 4. November 2026 Time: 18:30 Street: Domshof 26, 28195 Bremen (Universität Bremen) Location: Forum im Domshof Room: Kassenhalle Abstract In this presentation, I introduce and develop the concept of boutique media to describe small-scale, personality-driven and affectively charged forms of journalism emerging in the wake of the decline of industrial news production. The presentation examines how journalists and other news creators (…)

On 5 October 2026, sociologist Elena Esposito gave a ComAI Lecture as part of the research group’s meeting at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI). Prediction is the core principle of generative AI, yet we still lack a theory of prediction. Starting from this observation, Esposito asked what it means when algorithms (…)

From September 28 to October 2, 2026, the 43rd Congress of the German Sociological Association took place at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. The congress focused on the theme “Futures of Society”. The projects conducting research on ComAI in Pioneer Communities (P1), Journalism (P5) and in the personal sphere (P7) presented empirical research findings at the (…)

In August, Andrea Heisse (P7) presented her PhD research at the 17th ESA conference in Warsaw. Artificial intelligence receives increasing attention from the sociology of professions, raising questions about the algorithmic capacity to make knowledge claims, take over professional tasks, and implicate professional autonomy. In her presentation, Andrea approached these questions, drawing on empirical insights (…)