The prevalence of speech assistants taking orders, social bots influencing debates, and machines generating texts underscores the increasing sophistication of automated communication. Simultaneously, public discourse on these phenomena reflects the ongoing challenges associated with the automation of communication. It seems that the intricacies of today’s complex societies compel a reliance on automation to meet communication needs, while also generating additional issues for which automated communication appears to be the most plausible solution.
The “Communicative AI“ Research Unit, funded by the DFG and the FWF, is investigating in nine projects and one coordination project how societal communication changes when communicative AI becomes part of it. Top researchers from the fields of media and communication studies, informatics, sociology and law are involved. The research focuses on pioneer communities, the development of interfaces, the legal handling and governance of communicative AI, its role in journalism, in public (online) discourse, in everyday personal life through technological companions, in the health sector and in learning and teaching.
Research Unit “Communicative AI” is hosting a full-day pre-conference at the ICA 2027 Annual Conference in Glasgow on 3 June 2027, and the call for papers is now open. We invite empirical and theoretical contributions on how communicative AI is transforming societal communication: how it is imagined, developed, regulated and legally framed, and how it (…)
5. November 2026
Date: Thursday, 3 June 2027, 8:00 am – 5:00 pmVenue: ICA27 conference venue in Glasgow, Scotland (Scottish Event Campus or Crowne Plaza Glasgow; the room will be announced in January)Format: full day, in person only (no hybrid participation)Participation: free of charge, registration via ICA requiredSupported by: ICA Divisions Human-Machine Communication (HMC) and Philosophy, Theory and (…)
5. November 2026
ZeMKI Annual Conference · 12–13 November 2026 · Haus der Wissenschaft Bremen ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and similar systems no longer just mediate communication. They take part in it themselves: they write texts, hold conversations and act as counterparts. What does this mean for societal communication as a whole? At this year’s ZeMKI Annual Conference, our (…)
16. October 2026
This winter semester the ComAI project P8 at the University of Graz organises a collaborative film series between CIRAC (Center for Interdisciplinary Ageing and Care Research) and the GraSP Futures Studio. The film series features three screenings that explore the theme of “Human-Technology Entanglements”, in particular in relation to ComAI and its increasing importance for (…)
3. November 2026
This Thursday, November 5, Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp will be a guest at the conference “Remix the real: imagination, cultures, mediatization” hosted by the Italian Sociological Association (AIS) in Bologna. He will deliver the keynote as part of the plenary session titled “Drivers of Deep Mediatization: AI, the Quiet Futuring of the Future in Pioneer (…)
2. November 2026
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 (…)
28. October 2026
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 (…)
26. October 2026
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. (…)
20. October 2026
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 (…)
19. October 2026
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 (…)
10. October 2026
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, (…)
10. October 2026
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 (…)
10. October 2026
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp
ZeMKI, Center for Media, Communication and Information Research
University of Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67620
Assistent Mrs. Schober: +49 421 218-67603
E-mail: andreas.hepp@uni-bremen.de
