News

Our project P5  “Journalism: The Automation of News and Journalistic Autonomy” has been featured on the BredowCast, the academic podcast of the Leibniz-Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institute. Hosted by Kristina Kobrow, Prof. Dr Wiebke Loosen, Antonia Eichenauer and Jonah Wermter discuss findings from their first year of research.   At the heart of the project’s (…)

At the international conference “Creative Communication and Empowerment,” taking place on April 17. and 18. at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, ZeMKI Head Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp will deliver a keynote address on the topic of “quiet and loud futuring,” which is also the subject of his book on pioneering communities in relation to media technology (…)

As part of the ComAI Lectures series, communication and media scholar Axel Bruns visited the Bremer Presse-Club on April 7. Bruns, currently a Mercator Fellow at ZeMKI, presented a conceptual framework titled “Revisiting ‘the’ Public Sphere and its algorithmically shaped publics” that fundamentally challenges the classical Habermasian notion of a unified public sphere, replacing it (…)

The sociological research practice on communicative AI and artificial companionship at the Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, is entering its second semester. In this two-semester bachelor’s course, students investigate a wide range of questions related to AI companions. The course is led by ComAI members Michaela Pfadenhauer, Andrea Heisse, and Marvin Waibel. While the (…)

The Working Group on Digital Sociology of the International Sociological Association held its third “Work-in-Progress” workshop on March 18–19, 2026. The workshop offered the opportunity to present draft articles and engage in text-based discussions. ComAI member Marvin Waibel presented his manuscript, “AI Companions and the Communicative Construction of Agency.” The talk emphasized the need to (…)

The 71st Annual Conference of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) takes place from March 18 to 20, 2026 at TU Dortmund University under the theme #Science #Communication #Democracy. Members of the research group „ComAI – Communicative AI“ contribute numerous presentations, bringing perspectives from the Research Space as well as subprojects P1, P4, P5, and P6 (…)

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 (…)