The Transformation of Television and Lifeworld („Lebenswelt“) in East Germany

Beginn des Projektes: April 2019

Research project
From 4/2019 to 10/2020 Peter Ulrich Weiß worked on the project.

With the end of GDR television, well-known TV programmes and faces disappeared from the East German screens. Some viewers perceived this as "colonization" and interference in their personal lives. At the same time, however, new regional programmes were created with MDR and ORB. Since 1992, they have been trying both to establish familiar communication and to try out new formats. The television producers were faced with the challenge of developing new commercially competitive offerings for an audience that struggled for political and cultural orientation during the radical social change that was taking place at that time.
Based on a program and user analysis for the period from 1989 to the mid-2000s, the project examines how the so-called "Third Programs" ORB and MDR as well as selected local television stations accompanied the profound social change. At the same time, the study asks what contribution the television stations themselves made to the profound change in the new federal states.

This Project is a part of the BMBF joint project "Das mediale Erbe der DDR".

Nikolai Okunew

Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History
Am Neuen Markt 1
14467 Potsdam

Email: okunew [at] zzf-potsdam.de

 

Forschung

The Transformation of Television and Lifeworld („Lebenswelt“) in East Germany

Beginn des Projektes: April 2019

Research project
From 4/2019 to 10/2020 Peter Ulrich Weiß worked on the project.

With the end of GDR television, well-known TV programmes and faces disappeared from the East German screens. Some viewers perceived this as "colonization" and interference in their personal lives. At the same time, however, new regional programmes were created with MDR and ORB. Since 1992, they have been trying both to establish familiar communication and to try out new formats. The television producers were faced with the challenge of developing new commercially competitive offerings for an audience that struggled for political and cultural orientation during the radical social change that was taking place at that time.
Based on a program and user analysis for the period from 1989 to the mid-2000s, the project examines how the so-called "Third Programs" ORB and MDR as well as selected local television stations accompanied the profound social change. At the same time, the study asks what contribution the television stations themselves made to the profound change in the new federal states.

This Project is a part of the BMBF joint project "Das mediale Erbe der DDR".

Nikolai Okunew

Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History
Am Neuen Markt 1
14467 Potsdam

Email: okunew [at] zzf-potsdam.de

 

Forschung