In this project, we wanted to study how journalism uses digital data and algorithmic analyses to anticipate, draft, and evaluate future scenarios and developments. With that, we took a novel view on understanding the complex temporal orientations in journalistic practice and its products that sheds light on the largely unrecognized though essential aspect of modern time and its interrelation with modes of witnessing and knowing. Our project conceptualized and examined the prospective and projective dimension of journalism. It concentrated on data journalism as a recent field of communicative innovation that supports various types of engagement with the future.
In this project, I collaborated with Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, I spent spring 2018 in Israel and visited Hebrew University’s Department of Communication and Journalism. The three year project also received a grant from the Central Research Development Fund at Bremen University.
Selected project publications:
Pentzold, Christian; Zuber, Conrad; Osterloh, Florian & Fechner, Denise J. (2023): Redrawing the Lines of Veracity in the Sharpiegate Affair: “Pre-truth” Claims in a Post-truth Order. In: The Communication Review, 26(2), 99-124.
Pentzold, Christian; Zuber, Conrad; Osterloh, Florian & Fechner, Denise J. (2022): How to Make Sense of Nonsense: Political Absurdity and Parodic Memes in the #Sharpiegate Affair. In: International Journal of Communication, 16, 1051-1076.
Pentzold, Christian; Fechner, Denise J. & Zuber, Conrad (2021): “Flatten the Curve”: Data-driven Projections and the Journalistic Brokering of Knowledge During the COVID-19 Crisis. In: Digital Journalism, 9(9), 1370-1393.
Pentzold, Christian & Fechner, Denise J. (2020): Data Journalism’s Many Futures: Diagrammatic Displays and Prospective Probabilities in Data-Driven News Predictions. In: Convergence, 26(4), 732-751.