From 17 to 19 September 2025, the annual ComAI Summer School took place in Graz, following the research group’s retreat. The event began with poster presentations in which all doctoral researchers pitched the current state of their dissertation projects in short talks. Afterwards, they received focused feedback from PIs of other subprojects during an open (…)

From 15 to 17 September 2025, our Research Unit met for its first multi-day annual research retreat, followed by the doctoral researchers’ summer school. The meeting took place at the project site in Graz, Austria. The focus this time was on methodological questions: How can concepts such as alignment or appropriation be made comparable across (…)

The article by ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp entitled Curators of digital futures: The life cycle of pioneer communities, which appeared online in New Media & Society in 2024, is now also available in print. What is the article about? Research typically considers corporate actors such as large tech companies or government agencies as drivers of deep (…)

A new working paper by Göran Bolin entitled “On the concept of communication in the face of artificial conversational agents” was recently published. What is it about? There are, as of course well known in the philosophy of communication, several conceptualisations of the phenomenon of communication throughout media and communications research. Examples include the intersubjective (…)

Few technological developments spark more debate today than artificial intelligence. From promises of human advancement to fears of existential risk, AI generates a multitude of visions, conflicts, and societal debates. This “imaginative landscape of AI” goes beyond technical issues, encompassing political struggles, social movements, and ideas about the future of communication and society. The International (…)

As part of project P1 on pioneer communities within the “Communicative AI” research unit, interviews are currently being conducted to capture the ‘imaginative landscape of AI’ in the San Francisco Bay Area (Silicon Valley) and the greater Berlin area. By ‘imaginative landscape of AI,’ we mean the entirety of visions, positions, and conflicts seen in relation (…)

From 21 March to 12 June 2026, Prof. Axel Bruns (Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane) will join the research group Communicative AI (ComAI) at the University of Bremen as a Mercator Fellow. During his stay, he will contribute to cross-project discussions of our collaborative research, with a particular focus on the current theme of triangulations (…)

At the University of Bremen, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) is seeking to fill, starting at the earliest on 01st January 2026, a position as Research Associate (f/m/d). Pay group 13 TV-L, full-time (39.2 hours per week), limited to 36 months (in accordance with § 2 WissZeitVG) for the development of (…)

We are very pleased to announce that the “ComAI Lectures” Series will soon be starting a new round. For the first time, we have also planned a three-hour workshop. This will take place on 30 September from 10:00 to 13:00 in the conference room at ZeMKI.Our guests will be Prof. Dr. Nathan Schneider (University of (…)

From July 21 to 23, 2025, the first AI Lab of the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung (HFD) will take place in Münster. The aim of this new format is to bring together and further develop strategic and practice-oriented perspectives on the use of artificial intelligence in higher education. Also taking part is the ComAI project “Communicative AI (…)

In a recent guest article for the “Nachgefragt” section of APA-Science (Austria Presse Agentur), Juliane Jarke and Sara Skardelly explore key questions from their ComAI subproject “Health: Care Work through Communicative AI” at the University of Graz. The article addresses a profound shift in how society perceives aging and health: aging is increasingly seen as (…)

Our research unit Communicative AI: Researching the Automation of Societal Communication (DFG/FWF Research Unit RU 5656) is presenting itself with a new visual identity. At the center is a newly developed logo that combines the name “ComAI” with graphic elements evoking digital infrastructures and communicative networks. As part of this relaunch, the ComAI website has (…)