News

On the 10th and 11th of June the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society is organizing the 8th annual Weizenbaum Conference in Berlin. Named after AI pioneer Joseph Weizenbaum, it convenes research from various disciplines on the societal impacts of digitalisation, featuring transdisciplinary discussions.  This year’s conference focuses on the topic of Generative AI (GenAI) (…)

On 28 and 29 May 2026, the interdisciplinary workshop “Von Gegenwartsanalysen zum Futuring. Methods for the Future-Oriented Generation of Practice and Knowledge” took place at the Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen – a joint event organised by the ComAI research group (FOR 5656) and the Sociology of Knowledge section of the German Sociological Association (DGS). (…)

On 28 May 2026, the ComAI research group gathered for its quarterly meeting at the Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen. The highlight of the event was an open talk by Mercator Fellow Axel Bruns, who, together with Katherine M. FitzGerald and further co-authors, has published the article “Just Asking Questions”: Doing Our Own Research on (…)

The 76th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) will take place from June 2 to 8 in Cape Town, South Africa. This year’s conference is themed “Communication and Inequalities in Context” and will bring together over 2,900 researchers in the field of communication studies. Members of ZeMKI and the ComAI research group will (…)

On 26 May 2026, Prof. Dr. Simone Natale (University of Turin) visited the Bremer Presse-Club to deliver a talk as part of the ComAI Lecture Series, drawing on his recent article “AI, Agency, and Power Geometries” (Media, Culture & Society, 2025). Natale opened with a fundamental paradox: AI is a global phenomenon, yet it is (…)

As part of the ComAI Project P1 “Pioneer Communities: Imagining ComAI and its Possible Futures”, Prof. Dr. Andreas Hepp has published the article “The Imaginative Landscape of AI: Locating Silicon Valley’s ‘quiet futuring’” in the Media, Culture & Society Journal. The article is open-access and is freely available to everyone. The article’s key arguments are: (…)

Michaela Pfadenhauer (P7) was invited as a guest speaker at the “Health in Society” lecture series at the University of Vienna. In a dialogue-based format, she and sports scientist Assoc. Prof. Barbara Wessner discussed artificial intelligence both from their respective disciplinary perspectives.  With her presentation “Communicative AI in the field of support: AI companion apps (…)

It is not the typical opening question for researchers, but for Jonah Wermter and Antonia Eichenauer from the project “Journalism: Automating the News and journalistic Autonomy”, that was precisely how many interesting conversations began.   At re:publica in Berlin, one of the largest and most important conferences on digital media, politics and society, they set up (…)

As part of their research on AI companions in the personal sphere Michaela Pfadenhauer, Marvin Waibel, and Andrea Heisse are conducting interviews with experts on AI companion apps. The project aims to analyze the communicative form of AI companionship and to examine how it is realized in app design and interaction.  The following interview was (…)

On 21 May 2026, the ComAI research group’s Working Group on Diversity & Gender Equity launched its new internal Lecture Series. The inaugural session featured an input talk by Katharina Mosene from the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans Bredow Institute (HBI) and the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), on AI, discrimination, (…)

There are plenty of concerns and fears when it comes to how communicative AI is appropriated in journalism. To capture these, the project “Journalism: Automating the news and journalistic autonomy” has adopted a familiar tool often used in classrooms: the suggestion box. In this case it is a colourful box into which visitors to re:publica, (…)

On 14 April, ComAI team members Leonie Winterpacht and Sara Skardelly (from the subproject “Health: Caring through ComAI”) took part in the Innovation Forum, organized by the Centre of Innovation at St Monica Trust in Bristol, UK. The annual forum brings together residents, innovators, researchers, and care providers who are interested in the future of (…)