As part of the event “Who Is Making Generative AI the ‘Inevitable’ Technology of the Future?”, ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Christian Katzenbach will give a presentation in English on the social and political shaping of generative AI. This lecture examines the development of generative AI as a sociotechnical phenomenon. Using the AI strategies of the (…)

On 23 June 2026, Felicia Loecherbach (University of Amsterdam / NYU Center for Social Media and Politics) was a guest at the ComAI Lecture at the Bremer Presse-Club. Under the title “Inside the Feed. Data donation and political behaviour on social media,” she offered insights into a methodological field of growing importance: data donation as (…)

On Thursday, 25 June 2026, voices from research, media law and practice gather at the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce for the 16th Hamburg Media Symposium. Under the heading “The Information Crescendo: Where Search and AI Meet – and Media Could Fall Silent,” the event addresses a development that is fundamentally reshaping the information ecosystem: traditional (…)

On 16 June 2026, Rafael Grohmann (University of Toronto) joined the ComAI Lecture series at the Bremer Presse-Club. Grohmann is Assistant Professor of Media Studies (Critical Platform Studies), co-lead of the Creative Labour and Critical Futures (CLCF) cluster, and leader of the DigiLabour initiative. His talk, “Worker-led AI Governance in Cultural Industries,” asked how cultural (…)

Date: Friday, July 24, 26Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 PM (CEST)Format: Online via Zoom – https://lmu-munich.zoom-x.de/j/69013752224?pwd=gPpl3YaHMtn7TQu8J2z39e5wtTT0Sa.1 (Meeting-ID: 690 1375 2224 | Kenncode: 680823)Language: German On Friday, July 24, 2026, the ComAI and DISELMA research units will host a joint research colloquium. The colloquium will take place online via Zoom. External guests are very welcome to (…)

A blog post by Andreas Hepp Anyone who, as a non-American, currently wants to work with Anthropic’s latest language model, Claude Fable 5, has, since Saturday German time, been receiving the message that the model is “currently unavailable.” Behind this lies an export control imposed by the US government, under which all foreign nationals are (…)

‚Academic Kindness‘ is sometimes reduced to a friendly way of dealing with each other in research and teaching contexts: to communicate appreciatively, practice constructive criticism and gratefulness. However, these individual practices of kindness are only one piece of the whole puzzle of ‘academic kindness’. In this workshop we will reflect our own positionality and responsibilities (…)

A blog post by Andreas Hepp Visions of possible futures with AI appear to vary significantly across different cultural contexts. In Silicon Valley and its pioneer communities, these visions are heavily driven by the possibilities of “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI) or “superintelligence” and the challenges of “AI safety,” as we are currently investigating through media (…)

On the 10th and 11th of June the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society is organizing the 8th annual Weizenbaum Conference in Berlin. Named after AI pioneer Joseph Weizenbaum, it convenes research from various disciplines on the societal impacts of digitalisation, featuring transdisciplinary discussions.  This year’s conference focuses on the topic of Generative AI (GenAI) (…)

On 28 and 29 May 2026, the interdisciplinary workshop “Von Gegenwartsanalysen zum Futuring. Methods for the Future-Oriented Generation of Practice and Knowledge” took place at the Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen – a joint event organised by the ComAI research group (FOR 5656) and the Sociology of Knowledge section of the German Sociological Association (DGS). (…)

On 28 May 2026, the ComAI research group gathered for its quarterly meeting at the Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen. The highlight of the event was an open talk by Mercator Fellow Axel Bruns, who, together with Katherine M. FitzGerald and further co-authors, has published the article “Just Asking Questions”: Doing Our Own Research on (…)

The 76th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) will take place from June 2 to 8 in Cape Town, South Africa. This year’s conference is themed “Communication and Inequalities in Context” and will bring together over 2,900 researchers in the field of communication studies. Members of ZeMKI and the ComAI research group will (…)