Social History of the Media

Bildinfo

American family watching television, 1958. Photo: Evert F. Baumgardner, Family watching television 1958, public domain, details on Wikimedia Commons

Since the late nineteenth century, modern mass media have increasingly shaped European societies. Whether politics, economics or culture, there is hardly an area of social life that has not been changed by the dissemination of newspapers, films, radio or the World Wide Web. The projects of this study area examine this process by analysing the interdependencies between the proliferation and transformation of media on the one hand and social changes on the other hand.

Projekte

Lena Herenz

'Laboratory of Unity'. The merger of East and West German radio journalism at Deutschlandradio

Associated PhD project

The associated PhD project examines the convergence of East and West German radio journalism in the transformation phase of the 1990s based on the example of Deutschlandradio.

Michael Homberg

Impostors. On the cultural history of deception in the long 20th century

Conference and publication project
Starting from the question of whether imposture and conmanship was connected to the political, social, and cultural transformations of the long twentieth century, the project therefore aims to trace the changes in the phenomenon.

Christoph Classen

Media History in the Cold War

Research project

The project analyses the history of mass media relations and interdependencies in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR until the end of the Cold War. Which reflexes, competitions and cooperations characterised their relationship, and how did it evolve? Was it primarily a propaganda war or did the mass media – especially public broadcasting – create a “bridge over troubled water” in the conflict between the two Germanys? How did the collapse of Communism affect this relationship?