Current Activities

With a master’s thesis related to the joint project, our former student assistant Johanna Wolleschensky successfully completed her master’s degree at the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Erfurt. For her thesis on “The Quality of Journalistic Information in Social Media from the Perspective of Adolescents” she received the highest grade (first examiner: PD Dr. Nicole Podschuweit, University of Erfurt; second examiner: Dr. Claudia Lampert, Hans Bredow Institute, Hamburg). Johanna Wolleschensky used stimulus-based guided interviews to investigate what young people understand by “journalism” and what general expectations they have of the quality of journalistic offerings in general and of journalistic information on Instragram in particular. We warmly congratulate Johanna Wolleschensky on her outstanding achievement and wish her all the best in her new position as a research associate at the Department of Journalism at the Bundeswehr University Munich. It was and is a pleasure for us to work with her!

In June, two lectures on the joint project will be held in Münster and Tübingen: On invitation of the Rotary Club, Assistant Professor Dr. Helena Stehle will speak in Münster on June 14, 2022, about “Journalism-Audience Relations Today – Mutual Expectations and Consequences of Their (Non)Fulfillment.” The following week, on June 22, 2022, Dr. Hanne Detel will present the collaborative project at the research colloquium of the Institute for Media Studies at the University of Tübingen. The focus will be on current research results from the exploration phase of the project.

In a talk titled “Investigating the journalist-audience relationship in the digital age. A multi-stage research project”, the project team is going to present its research program at the 72nd Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), the largest international academic association for communication scholars with more than 5000 members from over 80 countries. The hybrid conference will be held in Paris from May 26 to 30, 2022, on the theme “One World, One Network?”.

We are pleased to welcome two new members to the team: Theresa Neto Romeira, bachelor student at the University of Münster, will work for the team in Münster as a student assistant. The team in Tübingen is now complete with research assistant and master’s student Maxine Schneider. We are looking forward to working together. More information about the project team can be found here.

In her lecture „Journalistinnen und Journalisten und ihr Publikum: Enttäuschte Erwartungen als Ursache schwindenden Medienvertrauens?“ (Journalists and their Audiences: Disappointed Expectations as a Cause of Dwindling Media Trust?) at Adult Education Center / Volkshochschule Chemnitz, Nicole Podschuweit, Interim Professor at Chemnitz University of Technology, will present findings from the project to a wider audience on November 30, 2021. After the lecture, the audience will have the opportunity to discuss to what extent the disappointment of mutual expectations of journalists and their audiences might be a possible cause for the breakdown of journalism-audience relationships. The lecture is part of the project “trau.schau.wem? faktenfest und mediensicher“, which is funded by the Media Authority of Saxony.

Good news from Hannover: The submission for a presentation in the conference session „Future Programmatics: Erfahrene Kommunikationswissenschaftler:innen präsentieren ihre Programme“ (Future Programmatics: Experienced Communication Scholars Present Their Programs) of the 67th Annual Conference of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) 2022 was successful. Under the title „Zwischen interpersonaler und Massenkommunikation: Neukonzeptionalisierung von Journalismus-Publikums-Beziehungen im digitalen Zeitalter“ (Between Interpersonal and Mass Communication: Reconceptualizing Journalism-Audience Relations in the Digital Age) the project partners will be presenting the collaborative project and the underlying research program together with cooperation partner Assistant Professor Dr. Claudia Wilhelm on Thursday, February 22, 2022 (time to follow). Their presentation is one out of three one-hour Zoom talks in this conference session.

During the winter semester 2021/22, Erfurt subproject leader PD Dr. Nicole Podschuweit will substitute for the Chair of Communication and Media Studies at the Institute for Media Research at Chemnitz University of Technology. She will, amongst other subjects, continue to develop ideas for the BMBF joint project with the students in Chemnitz as part of the project seminar „Kommunikations- und Interaktionsformen digitaler Medien: Journalismus-Publikums-Beziehungen im digitalen Zeitalter“ (Communication and Interaction Modes in Digital Media: Journalism-Audience Relations in the Digital Age).

After a successful start of the joint project, the teams at all three partner universities are growing: Beginning in July, Jonas Büttner (master’s student, University of Mainz) and Sonja Walke (bachelor’s student, University of Münster) joined the team as student assistants in Erfurt and Münster. As of September, we welcome the master’s students and research assistants Johanna Wolleschensky (University of Erfurt) as well as Gina Feis and Elias Raatz (both University of Tübingen) to the project team. More information on the joint project’s team can be found here.

The joint project started with two kick-off meetings on June 8 and 15, 2021. In addition to the three partners, Assistant Professor Dr. Claudia Wilhelm from the University of Vienna participated as well. She will support the project as an external consultant. The meetings focused on planning the collaboration and the next steps to be taken.

A preliminary theoretical paper by Assistant Professor Dr. Claudia Wilhelm, Assistant Professor Dr. Helena Stehle, and Dr. Hanne Detel has been published in the scientific journal New Media & Society. Titled “Digital Visibility and the Role of Mutual Interaction Expectations. Reframing the Journalist-Audience Relationship through the Lens of Interpersonal Communication“, the authors develop a theoretical model of the journalist-audience relationship in the digital age, mutual expectations and their (non-)fulfillment based on the “Expectancy Violations Theory”.

Wilhelm, C., Stehle, H., & Detel, H. (2021). Digital Visibility and the Role of Mutual Interaction Expectations. Reframing the Journalist-Audience Relationship through the Lens of Interpersonal Communication. New Media & Society, 23(5), 1004-1021. doi: 10.1177/1461444820907023