ZeMKI members Prof. Dr. Andreas Breiter and Paola Lopez publish their new work “The double edge of communicative AI: continuity and disruption in higher education”. What is it about? This paper examines how Communicative Artificial Intelligence (ComAI), i.e., AI systems that automate communication, reshapes higher education. We advance “strategic temporal orientation” as a research attitude that (…)

Members of the ComAI subproject 3, Jonathan Nörz, Moritz Wiechert and Wolfgang Schulz, have published the blog post “Are we underestimating the communicative nature of the AI Act?”, which examines the EU’s AI legislation and argues that it introduces a distinct regulatory layer for communicative AI tools. The blog post discusses the regulation of AI-based (…)

Members of the ComAI subproject 3, Jonathan Nörz and Wolfgang Schulz, have published the blog post “Are we underestimating the communicative nature of the AI Act?”, which examines the EU’s AI legislation and argues that it introduces a distinct regulatory layer for communicative AI tools. The blog post discusses the regulation of AI-based communication systems (…)

On February 3, 2026, Andreas Breiter, Paula Goerke, Veronika Graceva, and Jule Jensen will present their hybrid-format lecture entitled “AI in Higher Education: Perspectives from Germany on Policies, Student Well-Being, and Datafication” at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) from 4 to 5 p.m. This presentation explores the current landscape of Al implementation (…)

The Leibniz Media Lecture by legal scholar Prof. Dr. Philipp Hacker, LL. M. (Yale), on January 28 was a double premiere: Not only was it the first Media Lecture organized by the ComAI research group, but it was also the first public event held in the new premises of the Leibniz Institute for Media Research (…)

A new article by ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp is being published as open access in a thematic issue of the International Journal of Communication (IJoC), edited by Christian Pentzold and Charlotte Knorr. The article, titled “Curating AI Into Being: Hacks/Hackers as Amplifiers of Journalism’s Digital Futures,” analyzes how the Hacks/Hackers network actively shapes the role of artificial (…)

As part of a workshop and an evening ComAI Lecture, media and communication scholar Mirca Madianou visited ZeMKI in Bremen. Across both formats, she presented and discussed key insights from her long-term research on digital technologies in humanitarian contexts, with a particular focus on power asymmetries, infrastructures, and the ethical implications of technological interventions. The (…)

Together, Rebecca Scharlach, CJ Reynolds, Vasilisa Kuznetsova, Blake Hallinan and Christian Katzenbach worked on a paper on value-driven AI governance. Here you can find the available preprint. About the paper: Values are omnipresent in AI regulation. State actors and AI companies alike emphasize commitments to values such as fairness and safety. Despite this seeming agreement, (…)

The current season of the podcast “Confirm Humanity – Epochenbruch”, produced by and released on Freies Radio Salzkammergut, is dedicated to key questions of digital transformation. Across five elaborately produced radio features, experts from different disciplines discuss the present-day epochal shift brought about by digitalization and explore how human interests, societal values, and democratic principles (…)

Our Fellowship Program invites international researchers to Bremen for four weeks to deepen and connect their research in the transformation of media, communication, and information. We are looking for established scholars who want to enjoy the thriving interdisciplinary research environment at ZeMKI. Disciplines include media and communication studies, computer science, film studies, educational science, studies (…)

The sociologist Dr. Laura Wiesböck heads the Junior Research Group “Digitalization and Social Transformation” at the Institute for Advanced Studies. She has received numerous awards for her work. In 2025, she published the book “Digitale Diagnosen: Psychische Gesundheit als Social-Media-Trend”. The publication received widespread acclaim (including from FAZ, Spiegel, and SRF Sternstunde Philosophie), reached number (…)