Chair of Media and Communication

Research at the Chair of Media and Communication Studies is clustered in the following fields: (1) Media culture, in particular the theorization and analysis of media-related forms of practice in their cultural, social, temporal and spatial relationships; (2) Digital communication, primarily the formation and appropriation of digital networked media technologies and sorts of communication; (3) Media analysis, i.e., the reconstruction of media content, its modes of representation and discourse formations in a comparison of different forms of communication and media systems; (4) Method development with a focus on the combination of interpretative and computer-aided empirical procedures; (5) Media education with regard to knowledge and learning in user-generated media. With these fields of work, the Chair follows on from the research profile of the Leipzig Institute.

In teaching, the Chair is primarily involved in the following areas: (1) Media culture research with a focus on media convergence, transmediality, multimodality, sociology of media communication, cultural studies, practical theories and media culture, mediatization; (2) Theory and practice of digital media, especially the history and culture of the Internet, design, appropriation and reception of digital networked forms of communication, user-generated content, peer production; (3) Empirical media and communication research with a focus on qualitative media (product) analysis; Discourse analysis methods; Interview methods; Participant observation / ethnography; Grounded theory; (4) Communication and media theories with a focus on media systems and media change; Technology theories of the media; Sign theories of the media; Cultural theories of the media.