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 (…)

Date: June 23, 2026 Time: 6:30 pm Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremen Press-Club Abstract This talk discusses how data donation infrastructures can be used to study political behaviour on social media platforms. It introduces data donation as a way to access user-centric traces of political information exposure and engagement that are otherwise difficult to obtain, and reflects on key (…)

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 (…)

Datum: 16. June 2026 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract This presentation examines worker-led AI governance, understood as the collective ability of workers, through unions, cooperatives, grassroots collectives, and social movements, to shape how AI is used, managed, deployed, negotiated, or refused at work. Grounded in ongoing empirical research with cultural workers across the Americas, the (…)

Date: 26. May 2026 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract One of the paradoxes of AI is that it is a global phenomenon, but at the same time, it is always situated in specific, local contexts and cultures. While approaches that aim to study local cultures of AI are important, there is the risk of neglecting (…)

Date: 05. May 2026 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Abstract Generative AI has become a significant trend in visualization research and practice since the release of ChatGPT in 2022. Despite this, we do not know enough about how visualization professionals are actually using Generative AI, its benefits, and disadvantages. In this talk, (…)

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 (…)

Date: 7. April 2026 Time: 18:30 Street: Schnoor 27 Location: Bremer Presse-Club Bio Axel Bruns is an Australian Laureate Fellow and Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. His books include Are Filter Bubbles Real? (2019) (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)