News

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 (…)

Our research group ComAI – Communicative Artificial Intelligence is represented at the international conference GenAI & Creative Practices: Past, Present, and Future, which will take place on 17–18 December 2025 at the University of Amsterdam. The conference brings together international scholars from media, cultural, social, and technology studies to discuss the social, political, and cultural (…)

On 25 November 2025, Prof. Dr. Taina Bucher (University of Oslo) visited ZeMKI as part of the ComAI Lectures. In her talk “Presenting AI: Slowing Down the Future”, she asked what gets lost when AI is imagined primarily as the engine of an ever faster, more efficient, and more “seamless” future: What disappears when everything (…)

On October 16, Jonah Wermter from Project 5, “ComAI and Journalism – The Automation of News and Journalistic Autonomy,” was invited to give a lecture as part of the SPIEGEL Group’s annual “AI Week.” In his presentation, Jonah spoke about the current state of research on AI in journalism, focusing particularly on patterns of appropriation (…)

Date: November 26, 2025 Time: 1:15 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. Address: Rooseveltplatz 2, 1090 Vienna Location: Seminar Room 3 (Institute of Sociology) Link: Communicative AI and Digital Companionship Speakers: Michaela Pfadenhauer, Andrea Heisse, and Marvin Waibel (P7) Abstract: Within the DFG and FWF-funded research group FOR 5656 “ComAI: The Automation of Social Communication,” the Vienna-based (…)

On 11 and 12 November 2025, SFB 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces” and FOR 5656 “Communicative AI” hosted the joint workshop “Digital Infrastructures, Space and Communication” at Technische Universität Berlin, featuring keynote impulses by Martina Löw, Silke Steets, Andreas Hepp, and Hubert Knoblauch. The workshop centred on discussing different concepts of infrastructure within both research consortia, (…)

On November 10, 2025, the research group Communicative AI (ComAI) held its quarterly meeting at the Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen. The focus was on an exchange with Prof. Dr. Andrea L. Guzman (Northern Illinois University), currently a visiting scholar at ZeMKI, as well as on planning the group’s joint publications for the coming year. (…)

Date: 25.11.2025 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract AI promises speed, efficiency, and seamless automation, yet in pursuing these ideals, we risk marginalizing practices and temporalities that matter: slowness, reflection, imperfection, and the capacity to linger. This talk reframes the conversation about AI futures by focusing not only on what is to come, but on what (…)

An article by Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp entitled “Approaching digital futures: why media and communication research needs to move from a perspective of consequence to one of emergence” was recently published in the International Communication Association journal “Communication Theory”. In the article, Andreas Hepp makes it clear that communication and media studies should focus more (…)

On November 4, 2025, Prof. Dr. Andrea L. Guzman (Northern Illinois University), visiting scholar at the ZeMKI, held a lecture at the Bremer Presse-Club as part of the ComAI Lectures series. In her talk, “Collective consequences of AI across media industries,” she traced the evolution of research in Human-Machine Communication (HMC) and discussed the challenges (…)

Date: 4. November 2025 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract This talk examines the shared implications of emerging AI technologies across media industries. Advancements in generative artificial intelligence are bringing rapid changes to communication industries. AI applications can perform increasingly human-like roles in the communication process and, as such, can augment and even automate human media (…)