Institute for Historic Journalism, Communication and Media Studies

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Today’s cultures and societies are extensively shaped by media communication: We cannot think about people’s everyday lives, about politics, economy or social coexistence without taking into account the role of the media. Communication and media studies attend to the social conditions, the implications and the significance of media, public and interpersonal communication.

Within such a frame, the IPKM argues for a comprehensive understanding of communication and media studies. Its members focus on historical and present phenomena of media communication, as well as its contexts and change. They work with different qualitative and quantitative methods. Fundamental for the IPKM is a critical approach which is oriented towards theory development. Important topics in research and teaching are:

• Media and cultural change: The current change in media communication and the related transformations of (media) culture. Important key phrases for this topic are the increasing mediatization of people’s everyday lives, the globalization of media communication and the growing dissemination of mobile and digital communication tools. 

• Media and press history: An understanding of the current changes in media communication asks for a historic foundation of media studies. One focus lies on the history of media and communication since the 16^th century and the establishment of a modern public and its change.

• Empirical research on media culture: Questions of media culture are being approached empirically. The broad understanding of empiricism at the IPKM integrates a large range of procedures, including qualitative and quantitative methods as well as theory-generating and theory-testing research. In concrete terms, the goal is to bring about fundamental patterns of media culture and its changes and critically evaluate them by analyzing manifold materials and data.

The work of the IPKM is supported by the media advisory board which consists of different regional media companies. The history of communication and media studies in Bremen goes back to 1957, far beyond the foundation of the IPKM and the University of Bremen.