Communicative Figurations

A research network on the transformation of mediatized cultures and societies.

Today’s society is inconceivable without digital media and their infrastructures:

work, leisure, socialization, the political public sphere, civic engagement, and more increasingly rely on digital media while at the same time having to address how digital infrastructures affect them. This leads to the ongoing datafication of social life—the representation of social practices in digital data and their use by tech companies and other organizations—as an increasing challenge to theses institutions’ very existence. The “deep mediatization” is, however, a contradictory and conflicting process.

The objective of the research network is to investigate which “communicative figurations” characterize deeply mediatized societies and their historical and contemporaneous change. What challenges do digital media and their infrastructures pose for individuals, for organizations, communities, politics and civil society? Where are current changes in the automation of communication leading? What space do communicative AI occupy in contemporary human figurations?

The network brings together researchers from various universities and research institutions who, starting from approaches in the tradition of process and figuration sociology, are looking for ways to explore and critically illuminate current digital transformation and its challenges.

University of Bremen
ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research
Linzer Str. 4
28359 Bremen, Germany

Phone: +49-421-218-67601
Fax: +49-421-218-98 67601
http://www.zemki.uni-bremen.de 

Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institute Rothenbaumchaussee 36
D-20148 Hamburg, Germany
Phone: +49-40-450217-0
Fax: +49-40-450217-77
https://www.leibniz-hbi.de