Christian Pentzold

Books

Pentzold, Christian; Gentzel, Peter & Reißmann, Wolfgang (in prep.): Was machen Menschen und Medien? Grundzüge einer praxistheoretischen Perspektive für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. — Abstract

Die Rede von Praktiken ist in der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft weit verbreitet. Eine systematische Diskussion des Potenzials praxistheoretischer Denk- und Forschungsansätze steht dagegen noch aus. Das vorliegende Buch ist eine Einladung zur tieferen Beschäftigung mit Medienpraktiken und wirbt für eine entsprechende Neuorientierung von Kommunikationsforschung und Medienanalyse. Dazu wird der Status Quo praxistheoretischer Ansätze in der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft kompakt vorgestellt. Interessierte sollen einen Einstieg bekommen und Expert:innen Anschlussmöglichkeiten angeboten werden. Es geht sowohl um Grundprinzipien praxistheoretischen Denkens als auch um die sich daraus ergebenden Haltungen sowie um Zugänge für praktische Untersuchungen. Im Zentrum stehen aktuelle Herausforderungen und die Möglichkeiten, Praktiken in Digitalmedien und vernetzten Medienumgebungen zu analysieren.

Nuernbergk, Christian & Pentzold, Christian (in prep.): Die neue Kommunikationswissenschaft. Baden-Baden: Nomos. — Abstract

Leben und Arbeiten in gegenwärtigen Gesellschaften sind mehr denn je von Medien durchdrungen. Kaum eine Beschäftigung und selten ein Austausch, die ohne digitale Geräte und vernetzte Dienste auskommen. Medien sind zentrale Instanzen von Lebensgestaltung und Beziehungspflege, von Arbeitsprozessen und kultureller Sinnstiftung. Medienvermittelte Kommunikation ist damit kein Teilbereich unseres Alltags, sondern der im Grunde permanente Zustand, in dem dieser stattfindet. Angesichts der elementaren Bedeutung digitaler vernetzter Medien und Kommunikationsformen bietet das Buch eine Einführung in die Neue Kommunikationswissenschaft. Es buchstabiert aus, wie Medienkommunikation aktuell verstanden und untersucht werden kann.

Hill, B. Mako; Pentzold, Christian & Shaw, Aaron (in prep.): Peer Production. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. — Abstract

The book on peer production breaks new ground. Peer production: A concise introduction will provide a general, accessible, and focused account of peer production that draws on scholarly literature without drifting into the weeds of arcane debates, research methods, or jargon. It will be the first concise introduction to peer production. It addresses the formidable gap in the market that does not offer any succinct overview on the tenets, conditions, and ramifications of this way of generating informational goods and services. We hope readers will take away a few central ideas from this book. First, peer production has become a critical mode of collaborative knowledge production that impacts billions of people on a daily basis. Second, although peer production represents a novel type of social collaboration, our understanding of it can be informed by learning from our understanding of the ways people have interacted, organized, and advanced collective interests in the past. Third, peer production offers both unique advantages over previous forms of collaboration as well as distinct shortcomings and challenges.

Pentzold, Christian (2016): Zusammenarbeiten im Netz. Praktiken und Institutionen internetbasierter Kooperation. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. [The practice of online cooperation] Dissertation award of the Sociology of Media Communication Section, German Communication Association. — Abstract

Die Studie untersucht die Praktiken und Institutionen erfolgreicher Kooperation, die durch das Internet als digitales, vernetztes Medium unterstützt wird. Am Beispiel der Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia wird erklärt, welche Praxisformen, Regeln, Normen und Software es den Projektteilnehmern möglich machen, produktiv zusammenzuarbeiten. Theoretisch werden dazu Erklärungen der Herstellung und Governance von Gemeingütern verknüpft mit mediensoziologischen, praxistheoretischen und neo-institutionalistischen Konzepten internetbasierten kollektiven Arbeitens und Organisierens. Methodisch nutzt die Studie Verfahren der teilnehmenden Beobachtung, Dokumentenanalysen und Interviews. Empirisch wird die freie Gemeingüterproduktion analysiert. For the book, please look at the publisher's website here

Kahnwald, Nina; Albrecht, Steffen; Herbst, Sabrina & Köhler, Thomas in collaboration with Fraas, Claudia; Gerth, Michael; Morgner, Sven; Kawalek, Jürgen; Pentzold, Christian; Saupe, Volker; Schwendel, Jens; Stark, Annegret; Weller, Anja & Welz, Tobias (2016): Informelles Lernen Studierender mit Social Software unterstützen. Strategische Empfehlungen für Hochschulen. „Medien in der Wissenschaft“ series. Münster, New York: Waxmann. [Supporting Students' Informal Learning with Social Software] — Abstract

E-Learning-Aktivitäten von Hochschulen haben häufig eine einseitige Ausrichtung auf die Unterstützung von Lehrveranstaltungen durch Technologien, insbesondere Lernmanagementsysteme. Dabei geraten die Studierenden als Zielgruppe nur mittelbar in den Blick. Diese Beobachtung nehmen die Autorinnen und Autoren des Bandes zum Anlass, das Lern-Erleben und die unterschiedlichen Phasen des Studiums aus Perspektive der Studierenden zu betrachten. Untersucht wird zudem, welche Unterstützungsangebote Hochschulen in welchen Phasen idealerweise bereitstellen. Die Autorinnen und Autoren formulieren detailliert, wie Hochschulen das studentische Lernen mit Hilfe von Social Software unterstützen können. Diese Empfehlungen basieren auf den Ergebnissen empirischer Untersuchungen sowie auf Fallstudien nationaler und internationaler Beispiele guter Praxis, die ausführlich präsentiert werden. Mit diesem Band möchten die Autorinnen und Autoren denjenigen, die in Bildungseinrichtungen des tertiären Sektors (aber auch in anderen Sektoren) tätig sind, konkrete Anregungen liefern, Unterstützungsangebote für das informelle Lernen von Studierenden mit Social Software stärker in den Blick zu nehmen und geeignete Angebote zu entwickeln.Die Publikation basiert auf Ergebnissen des Projekts „Learner Communities of Practice“, das zwischen 2009 und 2012 als Verbundprojekt sächsischer Hochschulen mit Förderung durch das SMWK unter Leitung des Medienzentrums der TU Dresden bearbeitet wurde. Full book can be accessed here

Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (2012): Online-Kommunikation. Grundlagen, Praxisfelder und Methoden. Munich: Oldenbourg. [Online Communication. Basics, Fields, and Methods] — Abstract

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube und Wikipedia sind aktuelle Beispiele der Online-Kommunikation. Ihre Nutzung ist zum Alltag geworden, ein Leben und Arbeiten ohne sie schwer denkbar. Das vorliegende Buch bietet Einsteigern eine Einführung in zentrale Aspekte der Online-Kommunikation. Folgende Fragen stehen im Mittelpunkt: Welche Eigenschaften zeichnen Online-Kommunikation aus? In welchen Formen und Praxisfeldern findet Online-Kommunikation statt? Inwiefern ist Online-Kommunikation multimodale Kommunikation? Wie werden mithilfe von Online-Kommunikation Identitäten konstruiert und Beziehungen gepflegt? Wie beeinflusst Online-Kommunikation politische und ökonomische Prozesse? Wie kann Online-Kommunikation empirisch untersucht werden? Der Band ist konsequent didaktisch aufbereitet und bietet eine fundierte Einführung in das Forschungsfeld. For more information, see here. For reviews, see here, here, here and here

Pentzold, Christian (2007): Wikipedia. Diskussionsraum und Informationsspeicher im neuen Netz. Munich: Reinhard Fischer (Internet Research; vol 29). [Wikipedia: Space of Discussion and Information Repository on the New Web] — Abstract

Wikis zählen zu den erfolgreichsten Entwicklungen in der jüngeren Geschichte des World Wide Web. In Funktionsumfang und Popularität lassen sie bereits jetzt ältere Generationen von Webangeboten hinter sich und ebnen den Weg für neue Formen virtueller Interaktion. Die Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia ist das mit Abstand größte Wiki. In den knapp sieben Jahren ihres Bestehens entwickelte sie sich zum umfangreichsten bislang publizierten Allgemeinlexikon. Das vorliegende Buch erschließt im ersten Schritt die Wikipedia als Untersuchungsgegenstand und stellt einen Überblick über den bisherigen Forschungsstand her. Als zweiten Schritt präsentiert die Arbeit einen am Diskurskonzept Michel Foucaults orientierten Analyserahmen für Wikipedia als Informationsspeicher und Diskursplattform. Im Anschluss daran entwickelt der Band eine Reihe diskursanalytischer Zugänge zur Untersuchung der Aushandlungsprozesse bei der Verfertigung geteilten Wissens und stellt sie an zwei Beispielen vor. For more information, see here. For a review, see here

Edited Volumes and Special Issues

Pentzold, Christian; Bischof, Andreas & Heise, Nele (in prep.): Praxis Grounded Theory. Theoriegenerierendes empirisches Forschen in medienbezogenen Lebenswelten. Ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch. 2nd, revised and extended edition. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. — Abstract

Dieser Band ist ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch für theoriegenerierendes Forschen. Die Beiträge erklären Prinzipien der Grounded Theory und diskutieren deren methodisch fundierte Durchführung und Darstellung im Rahmen empirischer Vorhaben. An Beispielen aus der Forschungspraxis wird gezeigt, wie sich Methodologie und Verfahrensrahmen der Grounded Theory zur Analyse medienbezogener Lebenswelten einsetzen lassen.

Knorr, Charlotte & Pentzold, Christian (in prep.): Big Data Discourses: Communicating, Deliberating, and Imagining Datafication. Special Section of the International Journal of Communication.Abstract

Approaching datafication through discourse means to engage with the eminent reality-making power of communication, deliberation, and imagination. It foregrounds the work that goes into rendering datafication a socially relevant phenomenon and problem. The Special Section we sets out from the idea that in modern societies the public understanding of technology is largely driven by discourses in the media and among policymakers and the imaginaries they evoke. It invites us to look at what datafication is or should be for a variety of publics and speakers and how they discuss, criticize, or envision the collection and use of data at different places, speaking from different situations, and at different times. That way, the Special Theme does not merely interrogate the status quo of big data analytics. Rather, discourses also involve prospective ambitions and normative stances about potential, desirable, or unwanted innovations.

Schapals, Aljosha Karim & Pentzold, Christian (in prep.): Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons. — Abstract

Communication is, by all accounts, a global phenomenon. Yet, it is neither an overall practice, nor does it follow general rules. Instead, on one hand, we find a multitude of local ways to generate and disseminate information, to use media technologies, and to participate in public discourse. On the other hand, there are overarching connections and interrelations, forged by international conglomerates and political treaties or created by forms of cultural appropriation. Against this background, this edited volume serves as a Media Compass that allows locating and mapping media landscapes internationally through the help of a set of coordinates. It provides a middle ground between fairly robust, long-term media systems and fluctuating fashions and trends in media usage. In-between these two extremes, its contributions gather and discuss the key structural elements in the political, social, demographic, cultural, and economic set-up of media infrastructures and public communication that show some stability – but are open to change. These elements form the framework for how media organisations operate, and people come to engage with communication. Some of them are country-specific traits; others carry transnational, though rarely universal, relevance like basic liberties, forms of government, multinational policies, or global rules of trade. The Media Compass assembles a collection of country portraits, not snapshots. Each of the contributions furnishes readers with a useful resource that can be consulted for a concise overview and assessment of a country’s media environment, formative conditions and circumstances, historical background and development, current issues and challenges as well as its position vis-à-vis other countries. The entries allow for comparative readings of the conjunctions and divergences that characterise a country’s place in the wider media landscape.

Lohmeier, Christine & Pentzold, Christian (2023): Communicating Memory Matters in Networked Environments. Special Collection of Memory, Mind & Media. — Abstract

Memory is a communicative affair. Throughout history, a growing diversity of symbols and genres of communication have shaped how we come to remember and forget the past. Indeed, memory comes to matter when it is communicated: people connect to a collective past, return to personal reminiscences, and revive bygone moments but also impair, inhibit, or prevent memories by way of communication. It is the prime mode through which the past is enacted in the present. Unsurprisingly, the majority of studies into the practice of lived remembering operate with a notion of communicative memory, often in conjunction with the kindred concept of cultural memory. The special collection interrogates the current forms of communicative memory making. It starts from the idea that while communication is at the heart of commemoration processes, it has recently been sidelined by a focus on (media) technologies. These rapidly changing material environments attracted much scholarly attention around questions of living digital archives, virtual memory places, and media archaeology. Yet the actual communicative exchanges that happen on the cognitive level, in the often machine-mediated interactions between people, and the social realm at-large have received considerably less interest. The special collection invites contributions that address the ways, data, services, and platforms enable communicative remembering across the scale from micro-level mental operations to macro-level societal processes. We assume that transforming media will leave their mark on how we engage with the past, interact with others, employ artifacts and documents, and thus construct memories. We also believe that memory making within and through these technologies means inclusion of some people and groups and exclusion of others. Reconsidering how communicative remembering has changed and how it is done today will also allow us to scrutinize some standard distinction on which the field is built. Hence, dichotomies such as communicative memory versus cultural memory, personal versus family versus public memory, cognitive memory versus social memory seem in need of re-thinking and renewal when considered from the point of digitally networked communication. With its focus on the active side of remembrance, the special collection aims at a tenet of memory studies yet it also reaches out to connate disciplines which share this interest, like cognitive science and psychology, science and technology studies, communication, political science, anthropology, and sociology. Read the full collection here.

Wehrmann, Caroline; Bischof, Andreas; Rothe, Ingmar & Pentzold, Christian (2023): Living Labs Under Construction: Paradigms, Practices, and Perspectives of Public Science Communication and Participatory Science. Special Issue of the Journal of Science Communication. — Abstract

The Special Issue addresses the lack of conceptualization and rigorous analysis of the paradigmatic foundations and practical frameworks of living labs. Unlike other publications on living labs, the Special Issue is not bound to a particular area of application but rather focuses on the communication and interaction happening there. It is interested in contributions that examine the ways, living labs are constructed and operated so to fulfil the promise of an open, active, and innovative science engagement. Papers are welcome that query the underlying theories and normative assumptions of living labs, for instance regarding the varying notions of what makes for a “productive” participation and “good” participants; it also involves thinking about other factors such a trust, agency, and expertise that come to bear upon the living lab experience. We too invite papers that present and discuss methods for studying living labs and what kinds of insights they help to generate. The Special Issue should also provide a space to interrogate the key moments in the life cycle of living labs like the definition of problems and possible solutions, the identification of stakeholders and their needs, or the organization of their temporal order and social responsibilities. It also open to papers that take a comparative look on living labs in different scientific or societal contexts. Read full SI here.

Katzenbach, Christian & Pentzold, Christian (in prep.): Automating Communication in the Digital Society: Contexts, Consequences, Critique. Special Issue of New Media & Society. — Abstract

Automation has momentum. Automation is a defining feature of today’s societies. Automation converts the production of content, the distribution of information and messages, the curation of media use, and the governance of our networked lives into machine operations. All of these areas are increasingly shaped by algorithmically-driven processes and automated agents. They help to automate the selection and filtering of news feeds and search engines, they attribute relevance and popularity, perform content moderation and fact-checking. Automated agents like social bots participate in organizational communication such as customer service and, as a potential force of manipulation, also seem to intervene in election campaigns. As of today, innovations in smart companions and artificial intelligence are driven by ambitions to delegate physical motoric functions, cognitive processes, decisions, and evaluations to increasingly autonomous and capable technology. This is not a one-way transfer from humans to machines. Rather, we also witness environments where people come to act in an automatic fashion, where human contributions feed into processes of automation and help to improve them. In consequence, the special issue of New Media & Society aims to study how subjectivity, autonomy, agency, and empowerment become defined and reconfigured in these novel human-machine encounters. We invite contributions that take issue with the conditions and consequences of automation and offer critical perspectives on the transition of human activity into machine operations.

Netzwerk Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Erinnerungsforschung (2023): Handbuch kommunikationswissenschaftliche Erinnerungsforschung. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. — Abstract

Das Handbuch bietet einen umfassenden Überblick zu den Grundlagen, Schwerpunkten und Perspektiven der Beschäftigung mit kommunikativem Erinnern und medialem Gedächtnis. Damit erschließen seine Beiträge das Feld kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Erinnerungsforschung und verknüpfen es mit komplementären sozial-, geistes- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Ansätzen.Im Kompendium stehen originäre Beiträge aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum zu den Themenbereichen Journalismus und kollektive Erinnerung, Medienbilder in öffentlicher und privater Erinnerung sowie der Erinnerungskultur kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Fachgeschichte in Verbindung zu internationalen Sichtweisen. Neben der Darstellung erinnerungskultureller Konzepte und Kernfragen sowie ihrer interdisziplinären Anschlüsse werden die zentralen Arbeitsbereiche der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung mit medienkommunikativer Vergegenwärtigung kritisch aufgearbeitet. Auf diese Weise trägt das Handbuch zur Aufstellung und Ausrichtung einer kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Erinnerungsforschung bei. More information here.

Schwarzenegger, Christian; Koenen, Erik; Pentzold, Christian; Birkner, Thomas & Katzenbach, Christian (2022): Digitale Kommunikation und Kommunikationsgeschichte: Perspektiven, Potentiale, Problemfelder. Digital Communication Research (Open Access). — Abstract

Es wird Zeit, Digitalisierung und digitale Medienkommunikation kom­munikationshistorisch zu erforschen. Digitale Kommunikation präsen­tiert sich oft als weitgehend zeitlos in einem immerwährenden Jetzt. Dabei hat Digitalisierung eine immanente historische Dimension. Sie ist nicht nur seit mittlerweile mehreren Jahrzehnten an gesellschaftlichen Wandlungsprozessen beteiligt, sondern hat sich in dieser Zeit selbst weiterentwickelt und verändert. Erst durch eine langfristige Perspek­tive wird es möglich, zwischen Kontinuität und Wandel, der Transfor­mation bestehender Kommunikationsphänomene und der Emergenz tatsächlich neuer Formen und Phänomene von Medienkommunikation im Kontext der Digitalisierung zu unterscheiden. Hierzu versammelt der Band Beiträge, die sich mit erkenntnisperspek­tivischen, methodologischen und quellenkundlichen Besonderheiten der kommunikationshistorischen Untersuchung digitaler Kommuni­kation befassen. Zudem leuchten die Beiträge die Potenziale digitaler Medien und digitaler Methoden für die Kommunikationsgeschichts­schreibung aus. So zeigt der Band auf, welche Fragen und Perspektiven möglich werden, wenn in langfristigen Perspektiven über digitale Me­dien und Kommunikation nachgedacht und geforscht wird. Das Buch will informieren, sensibilisieren, motivieren und hoffentlich auch ins­pirieren zu weiterer Forschung, die digitale Kommunikation und Kom­munikationsgeschichte zusammendenkt, und die dazu beiträgt, der digitalen Kommunikation eine Vergangenheit zu geben. Full book here.

Gredel, Eva & Netzwerk Diskurse - Digital (2022): Diskurse - Digital. Theorien, Methoden, Anwendungen. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. — Abstract

Die Diskurslinguistik als relativ neue Teildisziplin der germanistischen Linguistik beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie soziale Wirklichkeiten in transtextuell organisierten Einheiten konstruiert werden. Bisher finden dabei noch kaum Texte aus digitalen Medien (z.B. aus Twitter) Berücksichtigung. Ziel ist es, das Programm und das Methodeninventar der Diskurslinguistik in zwei Richtungen zu erweitern: Zum einen sollen die spezifischen Beschreibungskategorien und Analysewerkzeuge für Diskurse in digitalen Medien systematisiert werden. Zum anderen sollen Methoden und Instrumente der Korpuslinguistik und Digital Methods im Hinblick auf die Anforderungen der Diskurslinguistik evaluiert und ausgebaut werden. Die Publikation thematisiert Spezifika digitaler Medien und Plattformen aus diskurslinguistischer Sicht und beschreibt, welche charakteristischen Muster sich aus diesen Spezifika in digitalen Diskursen ergeben. Zudem werden ethische und rechtliche Aspekte bei der Analyse digitaler Diskurse (z.B. Anonymisierung igitaler (Sprach-)Daten) thematisiert. In einem umfassenden Methodenkapitel geben die Autor/-innen zudem einen Überblick über relevante Methoden für digitale Diskursanalysen, deren Einsatz an Fallbeispielen illustriert wird. Full book here.

Döbler, Thomas; Pentzold, Christian; & Katzenbach, Christian (2021): Räume digitaler Kommunikation. Lokalität - Imagination - Virtualisierung Cologne: Herbert von Halem. — Abstract

Medien und medienvermittelte Kommunikation beinhalten schon immer das Potenzial, die Bezüge zu Raum und zwischen Räumen auf der Mikro- wie auf der Makroebene zu beeinflussen. Mit den vernetzten digitalen Medien scheinen nun noch neue Qualitäten nicht nur hinsichtlich der Gestaltung, der Wahrnehmung und des Erlebens von Raum aufzutreten. Doch welche Veränderungen individuelle oder gesellschaftliche Raummuster durch und in Bezug auf die digitalen Medien erfahren und ob und inwieweit die digital vermittelte Kommunikation überhaupt noch an diese Muster gebunden ist, bleibt derzeit theoretisch und empirisch noch recht unspezifisch bearbeitet. Unzweifelhaft scheint heute jedoch, dass die neuen digitalen Medien den Raum nicht verschwinden oder unbedeutend werden lassen, sondern es deutet umgekehrt vieles darauf hin, dass damit Prozesse der Generierung, Entfaltung und Ausweitung von Räumen stattfinden. Ziel des Bandes ist es, einerseits einen Beitrag zur begrifflichen und theoretischen Schärfung und Vertiefung von Räumen digitaler Kommunikation, den Kommunikationsprozessen in digital entfalteten und dynamisch weiter entfaltbaren Raumstrukturen, der aufeinander bezogenen wechselseitigen Bedingtheit von räumlicher Struktur und kommunikativer Praxis zu leisten. Andererseits sollen mittels empirischer Arbeiten und Fallstudien Prozesse z.B. mit ihren funktionalen, symbolischen oder inhaltlichen Ausgestaltungen auf digital vermittelte Räume – seien es private oder öffentliche, lokale oder transnationale, temporäre oder zeitlich stabile – sowie die Kommunikationspraxis beeinflussende Strukturen aufgezeigt werden. More here.

O'Neil, Mathieu; Pentzold, Christian & Toupin, Sophie (2021): The Handbook of Peer Production. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons. — Abstract

The diffusion and appropriation of the Internet in all walks of life has popularized a new mode of peer production. The collaborative generation of knowledge amongst self-directed volunteers was once the exclusive purview of small groups, whether technical elites of hackers, or intellectual elites in academia. Today, millions of people have engaged in the collective production, revision, and dissemination of digital artifacts, such as computer operating systems and applications, encyclopedic articles, or film databases. By agreeing to share the outcomes of their (usually) unpaid labor free of copyright these multitudes challenged the intellectual property system, one of the core principles of the market economy. Peer production since then branched out into unexpected directions including wireless networks, maker shops and hacklabs, online currencies, and biohacking. It has also looped back into the market economy as some firms now pay engineers to produce free software. Other companies attempt to enroll the crowd of users through mechanisms such as open innovation projects and hackathons, or through the launch of ‘sharing economy’ platforms. The Handbook of Peer Production offers in-depth analysis of these emerging hybrid forms, as well as a uniquely comprehensive mapping of the origins and manifestations of peer production, whose principles and forms of cooperation have made inroads in multiple areas of production and sociality. Widening its scope, the Handbook of Peer Production also addresses the conditions which allow peer production to flourish or wither, as well as its consequences for the social order. The volume gathers contributions from a diverse group of recognized experts and concludes with interviews with practitioners of peer production, as well as a reflective piece on the future development of peer production. More about the book can be found here.

Lohmeier, Christine; Pentzold, Christian & merzWissenschaft editorial board (2020). Erinnern in und mit digitalen Medien. merzWissenschaft Special Issue, 64(6), 1-112. — Abstract

In Medienkommunikation wird Vergangenheit nicht als solche bewahrt, sondern sie wird in wechselnden gegenwärtigen Bezügen rekonstruiert. Die Vergangenheit und ihre mediale Darstellung spiegeln dabei aktuelle persönliche und gesellschaftliche Bedürf- nisse und werden für zukünftige individuelle und gemeinschaftliche Projektionen genutzt. Ohne Erinnern keine Gesellschaft. Vergangenes zu vergegenwärtigen, ist eine wesentliche Leistung und Bedingung von Gesellschaft und von hoher Bedeutung für die Identitätsentwicklung und die soziale Einbettung von Individuen. Im Erinnern werden bestehende Erfahrungen und Wissen, Deutungs- und Handlungsmuster in aktuellen individuellen, sozialen und kulturellen Bezugsrahmen relevant gemacht und realisiert. Medien sind unmittelbar und auf vielfältige Weise der individuellen und kommunikativen Erinnerungsarbeit und dem Tradieren von kulturellem Gedächtnis verbunden. Entsprechend ist der Wandel von Medientechnologien und Kommunikationsformen verknüpft mit den sich verändernden Möglichkeiten, Vergangenheitsbezüge erinnernd herzustellen. Konsequenterweise wurde das mnemo- nische Potenzial einer Vielzahl von Medien untersucht, angefangen bei Keilschrifttafeln bis zur Rolle von Massenmedien wie dem Film, dem Fernsehen oder der Zeitung. In letzter Zeit haben digitale vernetzte Dienste, Technologien und Anwendungen vermehrt das wissenschaftliche Interesse auf sich gezogen. Vor diesem Hintergrund befasst sich das merzWissenschaft-Themenheft mit der Frage, was Erinnern angesichts einer zunehmend von und mit digitalen Mediendiensten und damit verbundenen Möglichkeiten durchdrungenen Gesellschaft bedeutet. Wie wird Erinnern heutzutage praktiziert? Welche Akteure sind daran beteiligt? Welche Inhalte und Themen werden aufgegriffen? Welche Medien(-dienste) werden dafür herangezogen? Unter welchen rechtlichen, pädagogischen, kulturellen und technologischen Bedingungen findet dies statt und welche Implikationen gehen damit einher? Das vollständige Heft kann hier gelesen werden.

Lohmeier, Christine; Pentzold, Christian & Kaun, Anne (2020): Making time in digital societies: Considering the interplay of media, data and temporalities. Special Issue of New Media & Society, 22(9), 1521-1732. — Abstract

Studying media and communication processes through the lens of time and temporality enjoys a long history. Waves of technological innovation such as mechanization and electrification have come with a profound reconfiguration of social time. This holds true for datafication too. Datafication – referring to processes of quantification and the transformation of evermore objects into data, as well as the automation of judgements, evaluations, and decision-making – requires us to rethink, once again, the relationship between media, data, and temporality. The special issue of New Media & Society will address the continuities and disruptions emerging in the nexus of time and media. It addresses the challenges of acting in the present, acceding to the future, and mobilizing the past in increasingly datafied societies. We assume that the changing mediations of time leave their mark on the ways we process and order the pace, sequence, and rhythms of intersecting lives. The full special issue can be read here.

Kaun, Anne; Pentzold, Christian & Lohmeier, Christine (2020): Making Time for Digital Lives. Beyond Chronotopia. London: Rowman & Littlefield. — Abstract

Today’s digital media and networked technologies have in general been associated with the temporal regime of immediacy, presentness, and speed. Yet while they indeed seem to drive our sped-up lives, these notions of an increasing acceleration are inadequate to capture the complexity of lived time. This volume gathers contributions that interrogate tactics to counter and resist that dominant form of temporality. They ask how digital temporalities are experienced and constructed, negotiated and transformed in modern timescapes. The volume aims to contribute to the growing realm of literature that engages with practices of disconnection, non-use, and resistance to digital media use which further a regime of speed. This regime can be understood both as discursive construction or moral imperative and as temporal affordances that are emphasized, favored, and encouraged by digital media. More about the book here.

Pentzold, Christian; Kaun, Anne & Lohmeier, Christine (2020): Back to the Future: Telling and Taming Anticipatory Media Visions and Technologies. Special Issue of Convergence, 26(4), 705-856. — Abstract

Digital media, networked services, and aggregate data are beacons of the future. These incessantly emerging tools and infrastructures project new ways of communication, bring unknown kinds of information, and open up untrodden paths of interaction. Yet digital technologies do not only forecast uncharted times or predict what comes next. They are, it seems, both prognostic and progressive media: they don’t await the times to come but realize the utopian as well as dystopian visions which they have always already foreseen. At the same time, all calculation of anticipations has to rely on past data that profoundly shape our ability to manage expectations and minimize uncertainties. In these fast forward dynamics, the special issue of Convergence examines the futuremaking capacity of networked services and aggregate data. We ask contributions to consider: What role do digital technologies and data play in the construction and circulation of future knowledge, e.g., through forecasting, modelling, prediction, or prognosis? What expectations and anticipatory visions such as promise or warning do accompany the creation and diffusion of new media? Over the course of history, which imaginaries of social and technological futures have been propelled by the media innovations at that time? How do new media technologies and discourses contribute to the production and reproduction of social time that is future oriented? How do they impact on the ability to exert control over the future? The full special issue can be read here.

Pentzold, Christian; Mattoni, Alice; Burchell, Kenzie; & Driessens, Olivier (2020): Practicing Media - Mediating Practice. Special Section of the International Journal of Communication, 14, 2775-2984. — Abstract

The special section addresses the performative dimension of our routine engagement with media technologies and texts. In their conspicuous ordinariness, the practices of handling media and, in turn, the mediation of contemporary practices require us to assess how and with what consequences these dual processes become embedded in our lives. Therefore, the special section strives for an explanation and critical appreciation of media-related practices, what we do with and how we speak about the media, as perennial issues and pervasive exercises in which we find ourselves immersed. In studies of media and communications we often hear about media practices. The notion is invoked to stress the importance of performance and effort in creating and perpetuating patterns of mediated communication. Yet despite the rhetorical prominence, we lack a clear conceptualization and consequential analytical implementation of what media(-related) practices actually are (and what they leave out), their relationship to other types of activity, and what they add to our understanding of how innovations in media and digital data move from being unexpected, novel, and disruptive to the negotiated, embedded, and habitual. To assess the purchase of a practice-based perspective, the special section fosters cross-disciplinary conversation. It brings together scholars from media and communications, anthropology, and sociology. Their conceptual groundwork and empirical analyses scrutinize what media users actually do and say in relation to media technologies, texts, and genres, and the wider digitally networked ecologies within which those practices take place today. The special section is one of the first efforts to substantiate media and communication studies' interest in understanding the performance, routinization, and habituation of media-related activities. The full OA special issue can be found here.

Strippel, Christian; Bock, Annekatrin; Katzenbach, Christian; Mahrt, Merja; Merten, Lisa; Nuernbergk, Christian; Pentzold, Christian & Waldherr, Annie (2018): Herausforderungen der Digitalisierung – Theoretische und methodische Antworten der Kommunikationswissenschaft. Special Issue of Publizistik, 63(4), 469-582. — Abstract

Sowohl in theoretischer als auch methodischer Hinsicht liegen eine Reihe jüngerer Arbeiten vor, die sich den Herausforderungen der Digitalisierung für die Kommunikationswissenschaft bereits innovativ und umfangreich widmen. Für solche Arbeiten soll das geplante Themenheft der Publizistik nun ein Forum bieten, um die Diskussion über die Zukunft des Fachs anhand konkreter Beispiele fortzuführen und zu vertiefen. Zur Einreichung erbeten werden konkrete theoretisch und/oder methodisch innovative Antworten auf die in der Debatte thematisierten Herausforderungen der Digitalisierung. Insbesondere werden Beiträge begrüßt, die interdisziplinär angelegt sind. The introduction to the special issue can be downloaded from here

Katzenbach, Christian; Pentzold, Christian; Kannengießer, Sigrid; Taddicken, Monika & Adolf, Marian (2018): Neue Komplexitäten für Kommunikationsforschung und Medienanalyse: Analytische Zugänge und empirische Studien. Digital Communication Research (Open Access). Full book here

Pentzold, Christian; Bischof, Andreas & Heise, Nele (2018): Praxis Grounded Theory. Theoriegenerierendes empirisches Forschen in medienbezogenen Lebenswelten. Ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. — Abstract

Dieser Band ist ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch für theoriegenerierendes Forschen. Die Beiträge erklären Prinzipien der Grounded Theory und diskutieren deren methodisch fundierte Durchführung und Darstellung im Rahmen empirischer Vorhaben. An Beispielen aus der Forschungspraxis wird gezeigt, wie sich Methodologie und Verfahrensrahmen der Grounded Theory zur Analyse medienbezogener Lebenswelten einsetzen lassen. More about the book can be found here.

Pentzold, Christian & Katzenbach, Christian (2017): Komplexitätssteigerung und Komplexitätsreduzierung in der kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Theoriebildung. Special Issue of Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft, 65(3), 483-612. — Abstract

Theoriebildung, also das Entwickeln, Formulieren, Diskutieren und Anwenden theoretischen Wissens in Form verallgemeinerter Konzepte, erklärender Modelle oder analytischer Begriffe, bewegt sich stets im Spannungsverhältnis von Verkomplizierung und Vereinfachung. Das Anliegen der Kommunikationswissenschaft, die Bedingungen, Vorgänge und Konsequenzen von Kommunikationsprozessen und Mediensystemen in ihrer Komplexität adäquat erfassen zu wollen, scheint dabei der Notwendigkeit und Leistung von Theoriebildung gegenüber zu stehen, gerade eine Beschränkung vorzunehmen, um die jeweils im Fokus stehenden Aspekte abstrahierend und generalisierend beschreiben, erklären und gegebenenfalls prognostizieren zu können. Auch vor dem Hintergrund der Behauptung, dass sich die empirischen Gegenstände der Kommunikationswissenschaft, etwa durch Digitalisierung und Vernetzung, verkompliziert hätten, soll das Themenheft der Zeitschrift „Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft” dazu dienen, solche tatsächlichen oder vermeintlichen Entwicklungen zwischen Komplexitätssteigerung und Komplexitätsreduzierung in der kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Theoriebildung zu reflektieren. The full special issue can be found here.

Hajek, Andrea; Lohmeier, Christine & Pentzold, Christian (2016): Memory in a Mediated World: Remembrance and Reconstruction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (= Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies Series) — Abstract

In times when public and private spheres are mediated more than ever, this volume looks at the way personal and collective memories are employed to revise and reconstruct old and new forms of individual and social life. Considering both retrospective memories and the prospective employment of memories, Memory in a Mediated World examines troubled times that demand resolution, recovery and restoration. The chapters assembled in this volume provide empirically grounded analyses of how media are employed by individuals and social groups to connect the past, the present and the future. The volume argues that experiences of private or public crisis often allow for a projective use of memories, be they individual or collective. Hence, contrary to the idea that such states of exception eliminate memories, the volume examines the ways in which memories in and of traumatic, conflictual or incisive events and experiences are addressed through a productive employment of past experiences, ideas, relationships or strategies. For the book, please look at the publisher's website here A very nice review was published here; another one here and a another one here

Pentzold, Christian & Lohmeier, Christine (2014): Digital Media – Social Memory. Special Section of Media, Culture & Society, 36(6), 745-809. — Abstract

In times when all walks of live seem to be mediated, in the ubiquitous presence of communication devices and ever more ways to produce, store, remix and distribute messages, the special section assembles research and thinking on the relationship of social media and social memory and to ponder on key themes of current as well as future research. Memory and media are inseparable. Since the very beginnings of human culture, media have been employed to fix, share and store expressions and impressions of individual and collective experiences. Remembrance thus lives and sustains itself in mediated memorable objects and symbolic representations that become enmeshed and activated in memory work such as colloquial conversation, ritual ceremonies, retrospectives or reminiscences. Moreover, from wall paints and cuneiforms via manuscripts and prints to the rise of networked electronic infrastructures and digital media, socio-technical innovations reassemble the practices and materials of individual and collective commemorations. Taking this continuing twin relation, the special section captures empirical research that studies the interplay of current media and social changes and the acts and artefacts of memory. Given the swift appearance, broad diffusion and profound impact of novel connective and mobile services and applications, the special section considers how social media relate to the ways we ‘do’ memory. For the special section, please look at the journal's website here

Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (2013): Online-Diskurse. Theorien und Methoden transmedialer Online-Diskursforschung. Cologne: Herbert von Halem (Neue Schriften zur Online-Forschung; vol 10). [Online Discourse. Theories and Methods of Transmedia Discourse Analysis] — Abstract

Wie formen und ändern sich die Wissensordnungen einer Gesellschaft, in der digitale vernetzte Medien zum Alltag gehören? Auf welche Weise, mit welchen Mitteln und mit welchen Konsequenzen werden Diskurse in transmedialen Netzwerken hervorgebracht? Wie ist die internetbasierte Kommunikation über öffentliche Themen mit der massenmedialen Berichterstattung verschränkt? Und wie verhält sich interpersonales Kommunizieren zur publizistischen Tätigkeit kollektiver Diskursakteure? Die in diesem Band versammelten interdisziplinären Beiträge aus Kommunikationswissenschaft, Linguistik und Soziologie beschäftigen sich mit Online-Diskursen als diskursive Praktiken und diskursive Strukturen, die in Ensembles von Medien realisiert und dokumentiert werden. Er bietet einen Überblick über konzeptuelle Fragen der Konstitution von Öffentlichkeiten, des Zusammenspiels multimodaler Kommunikationsformen sowie der Verbindung kollektiven und individuellen Diskurshandelns. Zugleich werden methodologische und methodische Schlüsse für eine Diskursforschung gezogen, die sich konsequent mit den Bedingungen der online-medialen zeichenvermittelten Konstitution gesellschaftlicher Wirklichkeit beschäftigt. Ihre praktische Umsetzung demonstrieren empirische Fallstudien. Der Band richtet sich an ein sozial-, sprach- und kulturwissenschaftliches Publikum, das den Diskussionsstand der Theorien und Methoden der Online-Diskursforschung überschauen will, sowie an Studierende und Forschende, die für ihre empirische Arbeit Orientierung suchen. For more information, see here. For a (favorable) review, see here, for another (not so favorable) one, see here and yet for another positive one, see here

Journal Articles

Honkomp-Wilkens, Verena; Jung, Patrick; Altmaier, Nina; Wolf, Karsten D., & Pentzold, Christian (2024): Learning Together with YouTube? Adolescents’ Collective Use of Explanatory Audiovisual Content. In: Computers in the Schools. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1080/07380569.2024.2322166 — Abstract

Although YouTube explanatory videos are a successful video genre, there has been little research into the ways they form part of adolescents’ collective learning practices. To address this gap, the article examines the social relations and forms of collective interaction by which young people come to use explanatory content on YouTube. Our study of German pupils aged between 14 and 20 examines how and to what extent they engage with, view, recommend, and communicate about user-generated audiovisual instructions and explanations that cover school subjects and hobbies. The results show that the potentials of YouTube for collectively using learning- and education-related content often remain untapped, especially for school-related content. While YouTube videos occupy an important place as a source of information for hobbies, they have not prompted equal engagement with school subjects. Read the full article here.

Stein, Veronika; Pentzold, Christian; Peter, Sarah & Sterly, Simone (accepted): Digital Political Participation for Rural Development: Necessary Conditions and Cultures of Participation. In: The Information Society. — Abstract

There has been much enthusiasm around the use of digitally networked information and communications technologies to foster political participation. Given their potential to engage citizens in rural development via online tools and processes, there are particularly high expectations that these technologies will mitigate some disadvantages of nonurban places. Yet, even if these hopes are reasonable, there is still little knowledge about the enduring establishment of digital political participation for rural development. In response, our study centers on six exemplary regional case studies in Germany concerning the obstacles to and catalysts of digital political participation. The public administrators; members of associations, businesses, and nonprofits; and citizens we interviewed pointed to the importance of administrative infrastructures, tailored offers, and resourceful citizens. What these factors could, however, not achieve was a culture of participation that may inspire attitudes and lived practices. This has implications for understanding and facilitating digital political participation for rural development. By locating the incentives and barriers to civic engagement within a culture of participation, our work underscores the need for holistic, long-term endeavors to develop and encourage politically involved citizenship.

Pentzold, Christian; Lohmeier, Christine; & Birkner, Thomas (2024): Communicative Remembering: Revisiting a Basic Mnemonic Concept. In: Memory, Mind & Media, 2:e9. — Abstract

The article attempts to clarify what today constitutes communicative remembering. To revisit this basic mnemonic concept, our theoretical contribution starts from available approaches in social memory studies that assume a binary distinction between cultural and communicative modes of memory making. In contrast, we use concepts that treat them not as structural, historically and culturally distinct registers but as a repertoire of retrospection that hinges on the evoked temporal horizon and media usage. To further interrogate this practical articulation of memories, we direct our attention to the habitual, communicatively realised engagement with the past. We finally turn to the ways communicative remembering is done in digitally networked environments, which provide us with a pertinent mnemonic arena where rigid dichotomies of communicative memory versus cultural memory are eroded. The article can be read here.

Lohmeier, Christine & Pentzold, Christian (2023): Communicating Memory Matters: Introduction to the Collection. In: Memory, Mind & Media, 2:e8. — Abstract

Memory is a communicative affair. It is inherently intertwined with communication, representing a complex interplay that has evolved throughout history. An expanding array of symbols and communication genres has played a pivotal role in influencing the ways in which we remember and forget the past. The significance of memory truly comes to the forefront when it is communicated: individuals establish connections with a collective past, revisit personal reminiscences, and resurrect bygone moments. Concurrently, the act of communication has the power not only to enhance and revive memories but also to impair, inhibit, or even prevent them. Communication serves as the primary mode through which the past is brought to life in the present, thereby rendering it meaningful and relevant for the future. Full text can be read here.

Viejo Otero, Paloma; Katzenbach, Christian; & Pentzold, Christian (accepted): Smoothing Out Smart Tech’s Rough Edges: Imperfect Automation and the Human Fix. In: Human-Machine Communication.Abstract

In this article, we take issue with an idea of autonomous and efficient automation that is upheld through the paradoxical conjunction of a flawed vision of the technological fix and the under-acknowledged human work required to fill in the gaps between machines and users. Our argument is based on two case studies that sit at opposite tails of automation processes: the frontend of self-service checkouts and the backend of content moderation. This juxtaposition allows us to surface three themes on how the hype around automation is enabled by human intervention: the ad-hoc sociality in situated practices of automation, the capture of mundane expertise, and the inverted assistance of humans to machines. We argue that this human fix is not a temporary repair of malfunction, but a permanent and constitutive feature of automated systems.

Knorr, Charlotte; Wolter, Margitta; & Pentzold, Christian (2023): Whistleblower Memoirs: Deconstructing Data Consultants’ Insider Stories. In: Social Media + Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231224730 — Abstract

Whistleblowers have been instrumental in revealing the massive investments in state-sponsored and corporate digital surveillance and disinformation. Their personal accounts of what went on behind the scenes are usually presented in popular books marketed as offering insider stories. By interrogating the recapitulations of veteran data consultants, our article is interested in the way in which whistleblowers configure their role and place themselves in the context of their story in terms of agency and accountability. We examine and compare three recollections: Edward Snowden’s Permanent Record (2019), Christopher Wylie’s Mindf*ck (2019), and Brittany Kaiser’s Targeted (2019). Our analysis shows how these high-profile memoirs offer a look that is both intimate and distant. They at once promise to get close to and even behind what has escaped public scrutiny and in return try to dissociate themselves from their former trade. Their position of privileged precarity, which results from the casualization of digital labor, allows these data consultants to quickly become insiders whilst staying uncomfortable with many of the taken-for-granted ideological convictions and organizational orders. Rationalizing their involvement as disoriented diligence affords the whistleblowers the capacity to craft a story of enchantment, delusion, and subsequent awakening. Both their experiences and their position enable these disenthralled renegades to style themselves as honest moral arbiters in service of the public interest and brokers of exclusive knowledge. Full article can be read here.

Pentzold, Christian & Fraas, Claudia (2023): Media Frames as Adaptive Networks of Meaning: A Conceptual Proposition. In: Language & Communication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2023.09.001 — Abstract

The article extends the study of frames in verbal media discourse. We mobilize insights from linguistic semantics and research in the related fields of cognitive science in order to formulate a frame-semantic understanding of frames as adaptive networks of meaning. It allows us to see frames as flexible scaffoldings whose elements are controlled by contextual configurations. This extension is helpful, we argue, because analyses of public discourse have, to date, mainly operated with a model of frames as fixed ensembles. Understanding frames not as invariant clusters but as adaptive networks has implications for empirical studies, too. Consequently, we outline the applicability of our proposition in an analytical scenario. Find the article here.

Wehrmann, Caroline; Bischof, Andreas; Rothe, Ingmar & Pentzold, Christian (2023): Living Labs Under Construction. In: Journal of Science Communication, 22(3). — Abstract

Living Labs galore. Involving citizens and other stakeholders in science endeavors and integrating them in the design of new technologies and scientific inquiry is a core aim of contemporary research and development. Living labs are prime places in the quest of science to be more inclusive and to open up to people from all walks of life, including politics, design, and culture. Promising to foster participation, collaboration and co-creation around science, living labs have been mushrooming across the academe, from STEM subjects to the humanities. In fact, they have become the token for an up-to-date science communication that is not satisfied with conveying expert information but seeks an exchange with people that are addressed as the participants of, not just the audience for research. That said, it is also in living labs where the tension between the normative axioms and the precarious implementation of participatory science become succinctly apparent. The full article can be read here.

Stein, Veronika; Pentzold, Christian; Peter, Sarah & Sterly, Simone (2023): Sociotechnical Infrastructuring for Digital Participation in Rural Development: A Survey of Public Administrators in Germany. In: Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research Online first: https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2022-0107 — Abstract

The “smart village” flourishes—at least in policy papers that envision the revitalization of rural areas through the civic deployment of networked media and telecommunications. Yet while such aspirations are widespread, little is known about the views of those tasked with supervising and supporting digitally driven public participation for rural progress. To address the lack of insight into what these intermediary administrators conceive as catalysts and challenges for the realization of smart village conceptions, we surveyed representatives of regions in Germany who oversee rural development schemes, most notably within the European LEADER framework. For these key actors, digital participation does not mainly hinge on broadband access and IT availability. Instead, they emphasize the importance of human and administrative resources as well as multi-actor collaboration, which we discuss in terms of digital readiness, digital willingness, and digital activity. Building the smart village, we conclude, seems not so much a matter of technological infrastructure but of sociotechnical infrastructuring. Full text can be read here.

Pentzold, Christian & Knorr, Charlotte (2024): When Data Became Big: Revisiting the Rise of an Obsolete Keyword. In: Information, Communication and Society , 27(3), 600-617. — Abstract

This article unpacks the short-lived but momentous buzz around big data. Although talk about big data was once widespread, little is known about the efforts animating its semantics. Tracing this sociotechnical imaginary, we revisit how business insiders and IT commentators fueled the ephemeral yet potent excitement around the term. Our genealogical examination rests on a selection of publications from 2013 to 2017. We employ methods from critical discourse analysis to interrogate how big data was written into being and hyped into a topic of concern. In this aspirational discourse, tech evangelists and writers extrapolated from contexts in which large troves of data were already being harnessed to suggest that inescapable transformations were imminent. They sought to concretize abstract and unfathomable quantities while simultaneously overwhelming their readers with a sense of vastness that exceeds all contexts and outruns the most exuberant expectations. The term may have lost this luster, but big data technologies and practices are an integral part of today’s technological infrastructures. Read the article here.

Pentzold, Christian; Bischof, Andreas & Rothe, Ingmar (2023): Living Labs as Third Places: Low-threshold Participation, Empowering Hospitality, and the Social Infrastructuring of Continuous Presence. In: Journal of Science Communication, 22(3). — Abstract

In this practice insight contribution, we reflect on our learnings from configuring and upholding a living lab as a third place in an urban and distinctively non-academic environment. Trying to make space for an empowering hospitality necessitated withholding our schemes and workshop plans so to facilitate grassroots endeavors on the side of the people dropping in and staying around though they might follow unexpected paths. This follows no blueprint but requires researchers and science communicators to be open to surprises, to be patient and persistent, and to be willing to swap positions and be the learners, not the instructors. While the physical and technical infrastructures were at one point installed, keeping the social infrastructuring of continuous presence running remains an open issue that requires us to rethink how to fund and support living labs and their mission in the long run. Here is the full text.

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. — Abstract

Looking back at the 2019 Sharpiegate affair, the article investigates the articulation of “pre-truth,” which became evident when a willful ambivalence toward factual evidence dovetailed with a juxtaposition of provisional, future-oriented truth claims. In general, the maneuver works by taking predictive statements from the past and characterizing them as accurate from the standpoint of the present even when superseded by subsequent evidence. The notion of “pre-truth” adds nuance to conceptions of post-truth by looking more closely at the intertwining of veracity and temporality. Drawing lessons from the Sharpiegate affair, we show how the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account was employed to distort meteorological forecasts and challenge journalism’s privilege to premediate events as they unfold. In turn, legacy media organizations struggled to ward off these attacks. We investigate the snowballing U.S. news story around the affair using tweets and articles and reconstruct the frames bolstering the attempted pushback. None of the frames we found were new. Rather, they reflect yet another moment of public consternation and its limitations in coming to terms with the versatile repertoire of populist truth-tampering. Full text can be read here.

Pentzold, Christian & Bischof, Andreas (2023): Achieving Agency Within Imperfect Automation: Working Customers and Self-Service Technologies. In: Convergence. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856523117458 — Abstract

In this article, we propose to treat agency as something which is accomplished in the entanglement of humans with technologies. This redirects our attention away from the question of what distinguishes humans from smart machines and towards querying how people and automated apparatuses join in processes of mutual sociomaterial engagement. To further our argument, we look at self-service kiosks, which are ubiquitous yet largely overlooked components of mediated environments. We reflect on a participant observation in groceries stores and interviews with customers familiar with self-checkout facilities. They make us aware that operating this equipment is not an individual affair but a joint activity by default, taking place in a temporally regimented setting prone to human errors and malfunction when people try to respond to the terminals’ protocol. This sort of imperfect automation has ambivalent ramifications which rely on the capabilities of users and the capacities of an interface and its underlying operations. Agency, we conclude, thus becomes a matter of viable performance in which humans may act machine-like while machines perform an expanding share of activities.

Kaun, Anne; Lomborg, Stine; Alhutter, Doris, Pentzold, Christian; & Sztandar-Sztanderska, Karolina (2023): Welfare. In: Media, Culture, & Society, 45(4), 877-883. — Abstract

In this crosscurrent contribution, we approach the notion of welfare through the lens of the data welfare state. We, further, suggest that datafied welfare can be fruitfully studied with the capabilities approach to better understand how ideas and values of data welfare intersect with and may allow for the ‘good’ life and human flourishing. The main aim is to highlight the deep-seated changes of the welfare state that emerge with the delegation of care and control tasks to algorithmic systems and the automation based on datafication practices. Welfare provision is undergoing major shifts that imply fundamentally rethinking the role of technology that supports and enhances welfare with the help of data. The full piece can be read here.

Pentzold, Christian; Seikel, Anna; Koenen, Erik & Jünger, Jakob (2023): Talking the Talk but Not Leading the Walk: A Study of ICA Presidential Addresses. In: Annals of the International Communication Association 47(2), 151-179. — Abstract

Each year, the president of the International Communication Association speaks to the plenary session of its annual conference. Conceptualizing the speeches as disciplinary talk, we examined them using a combination of qualitative content analysis and bibliometric study. The results show how presidential addresses either aimed to present a metaview of the field or to offer targeted reflections revolving around individual interests. Both types reiterate common topics—that is, they talk the talk—but they receive scant attention and thus cannot respond to calls for more integration of the field. Moreover, the speeches do not lead the walk—they remain ambivalent about how to respond to its pluralization and do not steer communication studies in a particular direction. Read the full article here.

Pentzold, Christian & Rothe, Ingmar (2022): Drawn into the future. The Epistemic Work of Visual Scenarios in the Configuration of Human-Robot Encounters. In: Visual Communication. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572221112676 — Abstract

The article looks at artistic impressions of future robotics and considers how they inspire research into human–machine interaction. Our analysis of visual scientific practices and the epistemic ramifications of these speculative drawings emerges from a long-term participant observation study in a multi-disciplinary project on smart and autonomous technologies in public spaces. We discuss the design, appropriation and modulation of visual scenarios and scrutinize how these diegetic futurescapes are imaginatively engaging and suggestive of scientific progress and experimentation. We argue that the future-oriented scenes defy common notions of post hoc scientific representations. Instead, they are ex ante presentations of the ambition to imagine human–machine relations in the future and to draw the large-scale research venture together. The register of evaluation thereby shifts from aesthetic criteria to scientific parameters. More than just visual tokens, the scenarios became a catalyst for collaboration. The full article can be read here.

Becker, Alexa; Haupt, Benedikt; Berger, Arne & Pentzold, Christian (2022): Future Home Stories: Participatory Predicaments and Methodological Scaffolding in the Narrative Speculation on Alternative Domestic Lives. In: Digital Creativity, 33(3), 276-294. — Abstract

Not infrequently, smart home imaginaries and installations are envisaged for nuclear families dwelling in detached houses fitted with the latest Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. In our article, we follow one approach to escape this powerful but inadequate projection that entails inviting people to imagine alternative forms of domestic IoT use. Surveying the setup of these nascent endeavors, in particular attempts that pivot on narrative accounts and forward-oriented fictions on the design of new habitats, we show how these seek to evoke visions of technologically supported cohabitation and everyday life. Due to their inclusive ambitions, such approaches face participatory predicaments that arise from the sought-after spontaneity and creativity within a purposive process. In response, all of them resort to methodological scaffolding that helps their designers to reconcile the tension between the idiosyncrasies embraced by the procedures and the overarching requirements of a particular exercise. The full paper can be read here.

Stein, Veronika; Pentzold, Christian; Peter, Sarah & Sterly, Simone (2022): Digitalization and Civic Participation in Rural Areas. A Systematic Review of Scientific Journals, 2010-2020. In: Spatial Research and Planning, 80(3), 251-266. — Abstract

The smart village is digitally networked and participatory. Its “smartness”, in other words, should be based on interaction between technological infrastructures and civic engagement. While this vision has inspired European policymaking and public discourse in recent years, understanding of the interaction between digitalization and civic participation in rural areas remains limited. In order to fill this gap, this paper offers a systematic review of journal contributions situated at the intersection of digitalization, participatory efforts and rural development. Overall, our study shows that digital rural development and its interplay with participation processes is still a niche concern in scientific journals. We find that articles focus primarily on projects seeking to increase broadband capacity. Second, they focus on the spatial characteristics of rural areas, where social relations and intermediaries play an important role. Third, they emphasize the integration of top-down measures with bottom-up initiatives. There is no single, dominant theoretical approach conceptualizing the intertwining of digitalization and civic participation processes in rural areas. It is evident that local social networks are strengthened and maintained through both analogue and digital formats. Furthermore, the literature provides evidence that sustainable forms of digital engagement are based on civil society initiatives that are supported and accompanied by administrative measures. Full article here.

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. — Abstract

This article interrogates the memetic reactions triggered by #Sharpiegate. The affair was a moment of political absurdity that provoked critical engagement with the irrationalities of Trump’s performance. Analyzing the imbroglio around a doctored map of Hurricane Dorian in 2019, we show how parodic memes offered a response to publicly displayed unreasonableness. Our analysis characterizes the renditions shared on Twitter as clumsy corrections. In the tradition of political jamming and its tactic of détournement, this memetic genre works by emulating the distortion of images with bold scribbles. The renditions take the form of prospective or retrospective interventions that hoped to draw a desirable condition into being. This gesture of point-blank meddling stands in opposition to the populist truth-tampering that became evident in the affair. The meme provided a rallying point for spontaneous resonance and collective self-ascertainment while acknowledging its limited ability to correct political pretensions out of touch with reality. Read the full article here.

Pentzold, Christian (2021): Mediale Erinnerungsarbeit zwischen Retrospektion und Projektion. In: Zeitschrift für Semiotik, 43(1-2), 213-232. — Abstract

Remembering is both cognitive act and communicative process. The social conduct is dependent on media in order to record, transport, and relive all things deemed memorable. Starting from this basic assumption, the article discusses, in a first step, the concept of media memory work through which relations to the past are accomplished and enacted. In a second step, the online encyclopedia is employed to show what kinds of insights about the contingent and potentially conflictual constitution of mnemonic texts become possible. Finally, we take a look at the twofold temporal orientation of media memory work that is not only happing in retrospect since all references to the past implicate a space of possible future developments.

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. — Abstract

The Coronavirus has prompted an urgent need for guidance and practical intervention. Newsmakers responded to this demand by providing outlooks that plotted the contagion’s contours against a host of parameters. The article looks back at this acute area of sensemaking where journalistic forecasts, epidemiological modelling, and policy measures intertwined. It examines how possible courses of the pandemic were displayed and discussed in the multimodal infographics and reports of data journalistic news products. The estimations predominantly choose to take the form of bell-shaped curves which conceived of the disease as a kind of wave that should, after reaching its peak, flatten out again. Confronted with an immense degree of uncertainty around the illness and an ambiguous environment of conflicting meanings and explanations, we argue that this predictive newswork fulfilled some of the journalistic functions of brokering knowledge. By giving cogent visual form to the incoherent prognoses, it raised awareness of the available models and rendered COVID-19’s potential developments accessible to policy makers and the public. By comparing sources, the data-driven forecasts fostered engagement with the spectrum of outlooks and the uncertainty they entailed. Furthermore, the news pieces connected consonant sources from science and public health institutions. Here's the article.

Pentzold, Christian (2021): Mundane Work for Utopian Ends: Freeing Digital Materials in Peer Production. In: New Media & Society, 23(4), 861-833. — Abstract

This article studies the online encyclopedia Wikipedia as a core example of the storage and sharing of commons-based digital materials. It focuses on the voluntary, day-to-day activities of its editors as they gather and transform digital information goods that are made available free of charge. Using the notion of articulation work, I stress the effort that goes into accommodating the engagement with the encyclopedia within the contributors’ media-suffused daily routines. Then, the article discusses the typical practices of transcribing, republishing, and relicensing through which the transition from non-free ownership to freely shared property is brought about. Finally, the freedom that is inherent in the modification of the legal status of ideas and artifacts and their public circulation requires us to interrogate the ethical implications of the digital commons collected and spread by Wikipedians. The full article can be read here.

Pentzold, Christian & Fechner, Denise J. (2021): Probabilistic Storytelling and Temporal Exigencies in Predictive Data Journalism. In: Digital Journalism, 6(9), 715-736. — Abstract

The future of data-driven journalism has attracted widespread attention, but what about the future in data journalism? In other words: How do future predictions shape the formulation of knowledge claims in newsmaking that relies on the analysis of large troves of digital data? Based on interviews with professionals working on such projects, we study how they exploited predictive analytics to make evidentiary propositions and we interrogate the epistemological conceptions that underpin this future-oriented data journalism. Despite growing ambitions to generate more precise prognoses in a shorter amount of time, the practitioners downplayed the journalistic relevance of such projections. Instead, they stressed their dependence on past numeric information and the time-consuming effort needed to produce forward-looking stories that connect with the public. We argue that acknowledging the temporal exigencies around anticipatory news allowed those working on data journalistic projects to explore the possibilities of probabilistic storytelling while at the same time maintaining a professional paradigm of fact-based, post hoc reporting. The full article can be read here.

Pentzold, Christian & Sommer, Vivien (2021): Remembering John/Ivan Demjanjuk: Inclusive and Exclusive Frames in Cosmopolitan Holocaust Discourse. In: International Communication Gazette, 83(7), 685-707-. — Abstract

This article analyzes the media representations circulating around the trials of the accused Nazi collaborator John/Ivan Demjanjuk. It examines the American, Dutch, German, Russian, Jewish-Dutch, and Jewish-American discourses that framed the consecutive legal proceedings in Israel, the U.S., and Germany. Our study interrogates the convergences and divergences in the transcultural translations as well as the local appropriations of the events that formed part of the cosmopolitan commemoration of the Holocaust. We reconstructed inclusive media frames which were able to traverse different languages and cultures. We also found exclusive frames in our study that did not travel across these boundaries. The palette of views on Demjanjuk’s personal guilt and on the capacity of the trials were informed by culturally distinct mnemonic tropes and sponsored by different groups of memory agents. The full OA article can be downloaded from here.

Puschmann, Cornelius & Pentzold, Christian (2021): A Field Comes of Age: Tracking Research on the Internet within Communication Studies, 1994 to 2018. In: Internet Histories, 5(2), 135-153. — Abstract

Since its inception, the internet has been as much technological as social, practical as ideological in character. This article examines academic discourse and asks how research on the multifaceted internet has evolved over the past 25 years. In order to investigate the formation of this academic field, we collected articles published in major academic journals dedicated to new media and digital communication as well as mainstream periodicals in communication studies over the past quarter of a century. Relying on a combination of (semi)automated content analysis and citation analysis, we find that articles related to the internet and its manifold aspects are cited more often than research on other topics. The literature review suggests that as the sociomaterial infrastructure of the internet has become deeply enmeshed in society its study has evolved from a niche pursuit to the discipline’s core area of inquiry. Read the full article here

Lohmeier, Christine & Pentzold, Christian (2020): Erinnern in und mit digitalen Medien. In: merzWissenschaft, 64(6), 3-7. — Abstract

Vergangenheit wird in Medienkommunikation nicht einfach bewahrt oder konserviert, sondern sie wird in kontingenten gegenwärtigen Bezügen aufgearbeitet und gemäß aktueller Relevanzsetzungen rekonstruiert. Die Verbindungen zwischen digitalen Medien als mnemonischen Instanzen und den erinnerungskulturellen Stiftung von Identitätsbezügen und Gemeinschaftlichkeit liegen einerseits auf der Hand und sind andererseits in ihrer Komplexität bisher nur in Ansätzen detailliert nachvollzogen. Im Aufsatz stellen wir drei Dimensionen heraus: (1) Die zentrale Bedeutung von Bildern und bildbezogenen Praktiken im Erinnern in und mit digitalen Medien. (2) Die soziale Vernetzung im Kontext des Umgangs mit Erinnerungen. (3) Die vermehrte Erzeugung und rekursive Nutzung digitaler Daten in erinnerungskultureller Kommunikation.

Lohmeier, Christine; Kaun, Anne; & Pentzold, Christian (2020): Making Time in Digital Societies: Considering the Interplay of Media, Data and Temporalities. In: New Media & Society, 22(9), 1521-1527. — Abstract

Studying media and communication processes through the lens of time and temporality enjoys a long history. Waves of technological innovation such as mechanization and electrification have come with a profound reconfiguration of social time. This holds true for datafication too. Datafication – referring to processes of quantification and the transformation of evermore objects into data, as well as the automation of judgements, evaluations, and decision-making – requires us to rethink, once again, the relationship between media, data, and temporality. In this piece, we address the continuities and disruptions emerging in the nexus of time and media. Thus, we discuss the challenges of acting in the present, acceding to the future, and mobilizing the past in increasingly datafied societies. We assume that the changing mediations of time leave their mark on the ways we process and order the pace, sequence, and rhythms of intersecting lives. The full OA article is available here.

Pentzold, Christian; Kaun, Anne & Lohmeier, Christine (2020): Imagining and Instituting Future Media. In: Convergence, 26(4), 705-715. — Abstract

Digital media, networked services, and aggregate data are beacons of the future. These incessantly emerging tools and infrastructures project new ways of communication, bring unknown kinds of information, and open up untrodden paths of interaction. They are instrumental for the articulation of future visions and their interface with concrete design choices. More than just being material conveyors of future-oriented ideas, these technologies are deeply intertwined with conceptions about their impact on how we will live, how we will interact, and how we will learn and communicate. Thus, digital networked devices and services are not only technical innovations as they stay in constant interplay with the sociotechnical imaginaries that inspire and guide their production and diffusion. When examining the future-making capacity of networked services and digital data, a couple of overarching themes emerge. In this article, we would like to highlight three of them as they pertain to future times that are digitally imagined and enabled. These are the uneven spatial distribution of future opportunities, the conservatism of data-driven projections, and the preemptive presencing of anticipated futures. The full article can be read here.

Pentzold, Christian & Menke, Manuel (2020): Conceptualizing the Doings and Sayings of Media Practices: Expressive Performance, Communicative Understanding, and Epistemic Discourse. In: International Journal of Communication, 14, 2789–2809. — Abstract

It has become commonplace to speak of media practices as a nexus of doings and sayings. In our article, we scrutinize this fuzzy account and the forms of articulation it entails. We start by arguing that, in order to be recognized as social practices, activities—regardless of whether they are verbal utterances or wordless body movements—have to initiate a cultural signification process that turns them into socially intelligible performances. Forming part of social practices in general, communicative practices then are modes of sign use that enable us to address recurrent and newly emerging tasks of understanding, accommodating, and comprehending. We shed light on the insights such a conceptual distinction reveals by interrogating the shades of sensemaking within mnemonic online communities and their nostalgic remediations of the past. Read the full OA article here

Pentzold, Christian (2020): Jumping on the Practice Bandwagon: Perspectives for a Practice-Oriented Study of Communication and Media. In: International Journal of Communication, 14, 2964–2984. — Abstract

The article proceeds from the interest in a practice-oriented vocabulary in culturalist studies of communication and media. It assesses whether a jump on the practice bandwagon can be justified by the contribution of praxeology to scholarly work that seeks to contextualize communicative routines or the production and appropriation of media. Setting out from the principles of recursivity, relationality, and expressivity characterizing media practices, I look at the ways in which media ensembles are constituted through the articulation of their technological, discursive, organizational, and institutional features. From that, I outline perspectives for a practice-inclined analysis of the transformation of collective orientations to media, the maintenance of media-saturated everyday lives, and the modification of media affordances. Read the full OA article here.

Pentzold, Christian; Konieczko, Sebastian; Osterloh, Florian & Ploeger, Ann-Christin (2020): #qualitytime: Aspiring to Temporal Autonomy in Harried Leisure. In: New Media & Society, 22(9), 1619-1638. — Abstract

This article examines the representation and use of quality time. It brings together an analysis of images tagged and shared under the hashtag #qualitytime on Instagram with an investigation into the trope’s resonance in everyday life. In the interviews and profiles studied in this article, people used the term to indicate and display instances of self-determined solitude or of fulfilling conviviality in which mobile phones and social media were conspicuously absent. At the same time, the notion required them to carve out and valorize moments of purpose, a goal that was often unattainable. Use of the hashtag was thus accompanied by both the opportunity and the obligation to aspire to temporary retreats in which free time was employed for meaningful activity. This means that the somewhat pretentious keyword signifies the ideal of temporal autonomy while also pointing to the slim chance of finding uncompromised spells of time within harried leisure. The full article ca be read here.

Pentzold, Christian & Fölsche, Lena (2020): Data-Driven Campaigns in Public Sensemaking: Discursive Positions, Contextualization, and Maneuvers in American, British, and German Debates Around Computational Politics. In: Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 45(1), 535-559. — Abstract

Our article examines how journalistic reports and online comments have made sense of computational politics. It treats the discourse around data-driven campaigns as its object of analysis and codifies four main perspectives that have structured the debates about the use of large data sets and data analytics in elections. We study American, British, and German sources on the 2016 United States presidential election, the 2017 United Kingdom general election, and the 2017 German federal election. There, groups of speakers maneuvered between enthusiastic, skeptical, agnostic, or admonitory stances and cannot be clearly mapped onto these four discursive positions. Coming along with the inconsistent accounts, public sensemaking was marked by an atmosphere of speculation about the substance and effects of computational politics. We conclude that this equivocality helped the journalists and commentators to sideline prior reporting on the issue in order to repeatedly rediscover the practices they had already covered. The full article can be read here.

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. — Abstract

The article is interested in how newsmakers exploit numeric records in order to anticipate the future. As this nascent area of data journalism is experimenting with predictive analytics, we examine its reports and computer-generated presentations, often infographics and data visualizations, and ask what time frames and topics are covered by these diagrammatic displays. We too interrogate the strategies that are employed in order to modulate the uncertainty involved in calculating for more than one possible outlook. Based on a comprehensive sample of projects, our analysis shows how data journalism seeks accuracy but has to cope with plenty of prospective probabilities and the puzzle of how to address this multiplicity of futures. Despite their predictive ambition, these forecasts are inherently past-bound because they rest on archival data. This form of quantified premediation limits, we conclude, the range of imaginable ways of future-thought to one preferred mode, that is, extrapolation. Read the full open access article here

Pentzold, Christian & Bischof, Andreas (2019): Making Affordances Real: Socio-Material Prefiguration, Performed Agency, and Coordinated Activities in Human-Robot Communication. In: Social Media + Society, 5(3). — Abstract

Usually, the alluring notion of “affordances” comes with the idea that technology makes some activities possible while constraining others. Our article departs from this dichotomic view and seeks to appreciate the multiplicity of socio-material prefiguration. Discussing three empirical examples from human-robot communication, we show that the affordances of “smart” technologies are not acted out in a smooth, planned process or through rational action alone. Rather, affordances are collective achievements that emerge within the interplay of humans and machines. This challenges the separation into active use and passive usability. It also demands us that we think through what types of agency are associated with these kinds of agents and what we take to define agency at all. Agency rests, we argue, on the capability to engage in intelligible encounters; it builds on purposive activities even though they might only realize a limited repertoire of tasks. The full article can be read here

Pentzold, Christian (2019): Review: C.W. Anderson, Apostles of Certainty. In: International Journal of Press/Politics, 24(3), 394-396. — Abstract

The exploitation of numeric data in journalism has been embraced as a fundamental shift in the way news making is done. An air of newness and urgency pervades much of the mushrooming academic debate and professional discourse around the so-called “computational turn” toward quantitative reporting. Although it builds on this literature, C. W. Anderson’s book-length study significantly broadens our perspective on data journalism and the technological, institutional, practical, and intellectual settings that allowed it to emerge and thrive. Unearthing these historic contexts, it shows that the protean data-oriented forms of news making are not a recent trend made possible by digitization or networked communication. Rather, they are an element of innovation and experiment that has been threading through the multiple stages of modern journalism during the twentieth century. The full article can be found here

Pentzold, Christian; Brantner, Cornelia & Fölsche, Lena (2019): Imagining Big Data: Illustrations of ‘Big Data’ in US News Articles, 2010–2016. In: New Media & Society. 21(1), 139-167. — Abstract

Imagining “big data” brings up a palette of concerns about their technological intricacies, political significance, commercial value, and cultural impact. We look at this emerging arena of public sense-making and consider the spectrum of press illustrations that are employed to show what big data are and what their consequences could be. We collected all images from big data-related articles published in the online editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post. As the first examination of the visual dimension of big data news reports to date, our study suggests that big data are predominantly illustrated with reference to their areas of application and the people and materials involved in data analytics. As such, they provide concrete physical form to abstract data. Rather than conceiving of potential ramifications that are more or less likely to materialize, the dominant mode of illustration draws on existing, though often trite, visual evidence. The full article can be found here

Koenen, Erik; Schwarzenegger, Christian; Bolz, Lisa; Gentzel, Peter; Kramp, Leif; Pentzold, Christian & Sanko, Christina (2018): Historische Kommunikations- und Medienforschung im digitalen Zeitalter. Ein Kollektivbeitrag der Initiative „Kommunikationsgeschichte digitalisieren“ zu Konturen, Problemen und Potentialen kommunikations- und medienhistorischer Forschung in digitalen Kontexten. In: Medien & Zeit, 33(2), 4-19. — Abstract

Das Initiativ-Netzwerk „Kommunikationsgeschichte digitalisieren: Historische Kommunikationsforschung im digitalen Zeitalter“ der Fachgruppe „Kommunikationsgeschichte“ der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft und des Nachwuchsforums „Kommunikationsgeschichte“ NaKoge, das sich mit diesem Beitrag vorstellt, verfolgt vor dem Hintergrund des nachhaltigen und tiefgreifenden digitalen Strukturwandels wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisgewinnung und der zunehmenden Relevanz digitaler Forschungskontexte, wie sie aktuell auch in der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft intensiv diskutiert werden, das Ziel, die historische Kommunikations- und Medienforschung für die vielfältigen Herausforderungen der Digitalisierung und die Zukunft fit zu machen. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Fragen, wie sich im Kontext der Digitalisierung feldspezifische Erkenntnisinteressen, Methoden und Themen verändern und verschieben und welche spezifischen Fragestellungen, Herausforderungen und Perspektiven hieraus für die Kommunikations- und Mediengeschichte resultieren. Mit diesem Kollektivbeitrag sondieren die Initiatoren gemeinsam mit ProtagonistInnen der ersten Stunde wesentliche Schauplätze und Themenbereiche, die eine Diskussion zur historischen Kommunikations- und Medienforschung in digitalen Zeiten zu bearbeiten und zu berücksichtigen hat, und wollen damit zugleich Impulse für die weitere Diskussion und Forschung setzen. Programmatisch vermessen und reflektiert werden die Konturen, Probleme und Potentiale der Digitalisierung historischer Kommunikations- und Medienforschung und kommunikations- und medienhistorischer Erforschung der Digitalisierung in den Dimensionen (1.) Erkenntnisfokus, Gegenstandsbereich und theoretische Perspektiven, (2.) Methoden sowie (3.) Quellen.

Strippel, Christian; Bock, Annekatrin; Katzenbach, Christian; Mahrt, Merja; Merten, Lisa; Nuernbergk, Christian; Pentzold, Christian; & Waldherr, Annie (2018): Theoretische und methodische Antworten der Kommunikationswissenschaft auf Herausforderungen der Digitalisierung. In: Publizistik, 63(4), 469-476. Full paper here

Pentzold, Christian (2018): Grounding Peer Production in Practice: Editorial Routines and Everyday Engagement in the ‘Free Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit’. In: Communication, Culture and Critique, 11(3), 455-474. — Abstract

The article asks how voluntary engagement in peer production is grounded in the day-to-day lives of highly engaged contributors. To study their routines, I turn to the English and German language editions of Wikipedia, the quintessential example of decentralized and nonproprietary cooperation. Taking issue with idealistic accounts of free and open digital labor, the ethnographic inquiry starts by distinguishing the modes of constructive contribution from which the authors crafted their repertoire of editorial occupations. Based on participant observation, interviews, and the analysis of documents and communications, the study then explains how practical involvement is accommodated within the editors’ everyday affairs. The article concludes by arguing that the project rests on arranging rationalities of autonomy as it opens up a limited range of agreed-upon activities. The available tasks thus allow for different levels of mutuality and interdependency and they help to mitigate tensions between autonomous choice and shared commitment. The full article can be read here

Pentzold, Christian (2018): Between Moments and Millennia: Temporalising Mediatisation. In: Media, Culture & Society, 40(6), 927-937. Spanish translation: Entre momentos y milenios: temporalizar la mediatización. In: deSignis, 37(2022), 75-89. — Abstract

Attempts to ground mediatisation in time have, this commentary argues, usually exhibited two distinct temporal orientations: their view is either quite far-sighted or short-sighted. In one direction, there are indispensable studies on the historicity of mediatisation processes. They examine long-term transformations that are inextricably linked to the cumulative volume of information and communication technologies. In the opposite direction, media are treated as agents of social acceleration that hasten the collapse of time-space distanciations. What largely disappears unnoticed in the gap between these suggestive timescales are the multiple temporal structures and experiences that characterise people’s engagement with media technologies and texts. Rather than assuming that media have an inherent time bias, this commentary invites scholars to refocus their attention on the practices of temporal scaffolding through which the entimed potential of communicative devices, media programmes and services are configured. Doing so will help us to arrive at a more time-literate understanding of mediatisation as a fundamental but multi-faceted change in human activity, social institutions and cultural expression that will likely leave its mark on the practicalities and politics of arranging the past, present and future. The full article can be found here The Spanish version can be read here.

Strippel, Christian; Bock, Annekatrin; Katzenbach, Christian; Mahrt, Merja; Merten, Lisa; Nuernbergk, Christian; Pentzold, Christian; Puschmann, Cornelius & Waldherr, Annie (2018): Die Zukunft der Kommunikationswissenschaft ist schon da, sie ist nur ungleich verteilt. Eine Kollektivreplik. In: Publizistik, 63(1), 11-27. — Abstract

Die Zukunft der deutschen Kommunikationswissenschaft steht zur Diskussion. In der jüngst dazu angestoßenen und mittlerweile durch die Fachgesellschaft mit einem Zeitschriftenpreis ausgezeichneten Debatte geht es um die Frage, wie sich das Fach angesichts des digitalen Wandels theoretisch, methodisch und empirisch ausrichten soll (Brosius 2016; Hepp 2016; Jarren 2016; Theis-Berglmair 2016). Für alle, die ihre fachliche und berufliche Perspektive in diesem Fach sehen, ist diese Diskussion eine doppelte Herausforderung: Zum einen sind wir aufgefordert, die Kommunikationswissenschaft auf diese oder jene Art zu gestalten; zum anderen haben wir uns darum zu kümmern, dass ihre Fragen und Antworten neben denjenigen anderer Disziplinen weiterhin als relevant und anschlussfähig wahrgenommen werden. Um die Debatte konstruktiv weiterzuführen, möchten wir in dem vorliegenden Beitrag auf einige noch offene Punkte hinweisen. Ausgehend von im Fach bereits vorhandenen, aus der professoralen Flughöhe der bisherigen Stellungnahmen jedoch übersehenen Ansätzen schlagen wir konkrete Schritte vor, wie kommunikationswissenschaftliche Gegenstände, Theorien und Methoden unter gewandelten Kommunikationsbedingungen behandelt werden können. The full paper can be found here.

Pentzold, Christian & Fischer, Charlotte (2017): Framing Big Data: The Discursive Construction of a Radio Cell Query in Germany. In: Big Data & Society, 4(2). — Abstract

The article examines the construction of ‘‘Big Data’’ in media discourse. Rather than asking what Big Data really is or is not, it deals with the discursive work that goes into making Big Data a socially relevant phenomenon and problem in the first place. It starts from the idea that in modern societies the public understanding of technology is largely driven by a media-based discourse, which is a key arena for circulating collectively shared meanings. This largely ignored dimension invites us to appreciate what matters to journalists and the wider public when discussing the collection and use of data. To this end, our study looks at how Big Data is framed in terms of the governmental use of large datasets as a contentious area of data application. It reconstructs the perspectives surrounding the so-called ‘‘Handygate’’ affair in Germany based on broadcast news and social media conversations. In this incident, state authorities collected and analyzed mobile phone data through a radio cell query during events to commemorate the Dresden bombing in February 2011. We employ a qualitative discourse analysis that allows us to reconstruct the conceptualizations of Big Data as a proper instrument for criminal prosecution or an unjustified infringement of constitutional rights. The full OA text can be found here.

Borges Tavares, Sandra; Pers-Hoejholt, Mikka Lene; Stegmaier, Sanna & Pentzold, Christian (2017): Complexities of the Mundane: Recollections. In: Polish Political Science Yearbook, 46(2), 271-275. — Abstract

Personal and collective memory-making are usually studied on large scales that bridge rather extensive temporal distances, at least in human time. What is overlooked are the kinds of ordinary phenomena mundane memories are made of. The routines of keeping and recurring records, taking notes and planning the proximate future as well as representations thereof and the tools used to accomplish such activities often seem neither especially consequential nor important. Yet we argue that frames of meaning, cultural practices and socio-political cleavages profoundly inform their ethics of attention and recognition. They impact upon which mundane memories become normalised while others are rendered redundant, suspicious or precarious. The full open access article can be read here.

Katzenbach, Christian & Pentzold, Christian (2017): Theoriearbeit in der Kommunikationswissenschaft zwischen Komplexitätssteigerung und Komplexitätsreduzierung. In: Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft, 65(3), 483-499. — Abstract

Der Artikel hat das Ziel, Theoriearbeit in der Kommunikationswissenschaft als Auseinandersetzung mit der Steigerung und Reduzierung von Komplexität hinsichtlich ihrer Gegenstände und Begriffe zu erfassen. Zunächst wird die Dynamik theoretischer Entwicklungen in der Kommunikationswissenschaft auf das Zusammenspiel interdisziplinärer und innerdisziplinärer konzeptueller Tendenzen sowie der Transformationen empirischer Gegenstände zurückgeführt. Dann werden einschlägige Ansätze, welche Bedingungen, Vorgänge oder Konsequenzen von Kommunikationsprozessen und Mediensystemen in ihrer Komplexität erfassen wollen, kartiert. Im Ergebnis werden die Beschäftigung mit Komplexität als Bezugspunkt kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung, die begrifflich substantielle Fassung von Komplexität und die Auseinandersetzung mit den Ambivalenzen von Komplexität erörtert. Damit trägt der konzeptuelle Überblicksbeitrag zur weiteren theoretischen Fundierung der Kommunikationswissenschaft als sich ausdifferenzierendes Fach, zu seiner Anbindung an theoretische Debatten anderer Disziplinen und zur Reflexion der Veränderungen seiner Gegenstände bei. The full article can be accessed from here.

Pentzold, Christian (2017): Editorial Surveillance and the Management of Visibility in Peer Production. In: International Journal of Communication, 11, 2462-2481. — Abstract

This article investigates the scopic regimes of computer-mediated peer production and the possibilities for seeing, knowing, and governing that are entailed in its accomplishment. Examining the case of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the analysis takes a closer look at the everyday routines of mutual observation and the tools that authors have crafted to watch over each other through an archive of wiki-based activities. Based on a three-year ethnographic study among English- and German-language contributors, the article interrogates the technologically enabled gaze they direct to collaborative activities as a form of mutual editorial surveillance. Regarding the status of the knowledge circulated in such environments, it characterizes the management of visibility as an exploitation of both operational cognizance and nescience. In conclusion, the reciprocal information gathering by users about their peers invites to redraft, once again, concepts of panopticism commonly employed to describe modern societies of control and discipline. Full article here.

Pentzold, Christian (2017): 'What are these researchers doing in my Wikipedia?': Ethical Premises and Practical Judgment in Internet-Based Ethnography. In: Ethics and Information Technology, 19(2), 143-155. — Abstract

The article ties together codified ethical premises, proceedings of ethical reasoning, and field-specific ethical reflections so to inform the ethnography of an Internet-based collaborative project. It argues that instead of only obeying formal statutes, practical judgment has to account for multiple understandings of ethical issues in the research field as well as for the self-determination of reflexive participants. The article reflects on the heuristics that guided the decisions of a four-year participant observation in the English-language and German-language editions of Wikipedia. Employing a microsociological perspective, it interrogates the technological, social, and legal implications of publicness and information sensitivity as core ethical concerns among Wikipedia authors. The first problem area of managing accessibility and anonymity contrasts the handling of the technologically available records of activities, disclosures of personal information, and the legal obligations to credit authorship with the authors’ right to work anonymously and the need to shield their identity. The second area confronts the contingent addressability of editors with the demand to assure and maintain informed consent. Taking into account these problem areas, the ethical reasoning on the one hand proposes options for observing and documenting episodes. On the other, it provides advice on the feasibility and the necessity of obtaining informed consent. An uncorrected pre-print is available here. The full article can be found here

Pentzold, Christian; Weltevrede, Esther; Mauri, Michele; Laniado, David; Kaltenbrunner, Andreas & Borra, Erik (2017): Digging Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia as digital cultural heritage gateway and site. In: ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 10(1), Art. 5. — Abstract

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is both a cultural reference to store, refer to, and organize digitized and digital information as well as a key contemporary digital heritage endeavor in itself. Capitalizing on this dual nature of the project, this article introduces Wikipedia as a digital gateway to and site of active engagement with cultural heritage. We have developed the open source and freely available analysis architecture Contropedia to examine already existing volunteer user-generated participation around cultural heritage and to promote further engagement with it. Conceptually, we employ the notion of memory work as it helps to employ Wikipedia’s articles, edit histories, and discussion pages as a rich resource to study how cultural heritage is received and (re-)worked in and across different languages and cultures. Contropedia’s architecture allows for the study of the negotiations around and appreciation of cultural heritage without assuming an unchallenged and universal understanding of cultural heritage. The analysis facilitated by Contropedia thus sheds light on the contentious articulation of perspectives on tangible and intangible heritage grounded by conflicting conceptions of events, ideas, places, or persons. Technologically, Contropedia combines techniques based on mining article edit histories and analyzing discussion patterns in talk pages to identify and visualize heritage-related disputes within an article, and to compare these across language versions. In terms of digital heritage, Contropedia presents a powerful tool that opens up a core resource to cultural heritage studies. Moreover, it can form part of a conceptually grounded, technically advanced, and practically enrolled infrastructure for public education that opens up the dynamic formation of both knowledge about cultural heritage and new forms of digital cultural heritage that show a considerable amount of friction. The full version can be found here and can be downloaded from here.

Pentzold, Christian; Sommer, Vivien; Meier, Stefan & Fraas, Claudia (2016): Reconstructing Media Frames in Multimodal Discourse: The John/Ivan Demjanjuk Trial. In: Discourse, Context & Media, (12), 32-39. — Abstract

This article explores a way to reconstruct the verbally and visually constituted frames used in the coverage of the trial of John/Ivan Demjanjuk, a Ukraine-born U.S. citizen accused of holocaust-related war crimes. The study looks at an exemplary case of current multimodal discourse, in which written messages and images from broadcasts and press, as well as the comments and visuals that spread through social media, can be seen to relate to each other in framing public issues. To establish a viable perspective that takes into account both the communicative organisation and the semiotic constitution of such discourses, this analysis combines approaches from frame semantics and social semiotics together with recursive sampling and coding. The article then explains the analytical procedures used to reconstruct the framing of the accused as either a responsible culprit or a victim of circumstances. A preprint version can be found here. For the final version, please visit the journal's website here

Pentzold, Christian (2015): Praxistheoretische Prinzipien, Traditionen und Perspektiven kulturalistischer Kommunikations- und Medienforschung. In: Medien und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 63(2), 229-245. — Abstract

The article discusses the contribution of theories of practice for culturalistic communication and media research. First, starting from ambitions in social philosophy and cultural sociology to establish a praxeological paradigm its premises are explained along the principles of recursivity and relationality. Second, applications in communication study reflecting on or aligning with practice theory are registered. It is shown that the comparably sporadic intake is anticipated through the engagement with a complementary programme in the context of cultural studies and a selective adoption of authors commonly associated with practice theory, in particular Bourdieu and Giddens. Third, impulses stemming from practice theory for approaches and areas of culturalistic communication and media research are explored. Therefore, the perspectives for analysing the transformation of collective media use, the constitution of the everyday handling of media and the mutual formation of media technologies and media-related practices are explicated. For the final version, please visit the journal's website here A full version can be downloaded from here.

Fraas, Claudia & Pentzold, Christian (2015): Big Data vs. Slow Understanding? Voraussetzungen und Vorgehen softwareunterstützter Analyse transmedialer multimodaler Diskurse. In: Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik, 43(1), 112-133. — Abstract

The paper looks into the practice of a computer-assisted discourse analysis. Centring on the decisions and procedures that go into reconstructing multimodal frames from transmedia discourse, the paper has two aims. For one, it discusses the chances and challenges automatic text analysis has to address in facing the vast amounts of multimodal discourse that emerge in convergent media. Building on that, the paper explains the methodological premises and methodical procedures of a discourse analysis employing the computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti. As such, it presents an investigation that does not answer the current prevalence of available ‘big data’ with computer power but explores the interplay between an interpretative analysis and technological support. It does so by using material from the discourse on the so-called Handygate affair. There, state authorities collected mobile phone data during the commemorative events of the Dresden bombings in February 2011. They thus created a big data collection which became the topic of public attention and was either framed as illegal and extensive instrument of state surveillance or as an efficient and accurate tool for law enforcement and targeted prosecution. For the final version, please visit the journal's website here An uncorrected proof can be accessed from here

Lohmeier, Christine & Pentzold, Christian (2014): Making Mediated Memory Work. Cuban-Americans, Miami Media and the Doings of Diaspora Memories. In: Media, Culture & Society, 36(6), 776-789. — Abstract

How are mediated memories brought into being? In other words, how can we understand the ways personal and public memories are enacted in environments that have become increasingly digitally networked? Following this fundamental question for current interrogations of the entanglement of media and memory, we first develop a concept of mediated memory work. Instituting experiences and senses of the past, these time- and space-bound efforts interweave with arrangements of people and their social relations, cultural discourses, objects and media environments. Capitalizing on such an understanding of mediated memory work, the article demonstrates how and to what ends the enactment of memories can be empirically studied by using the example of the Cuban-American community in Miami. In particular, building on participant observation, in-depth interviews and media ethnography, we outline practices, cultural artefacts, communal bonds, compassionate relations and a media manifold that have been employed by different segments of a diasporic collective in shaping how the country of origin and the exile is to be remembered. Proof version (with a few corrections) here. For the final version, please refer to the journal's website here

Ziewitz, Malte & Pentzold, Christian (2014): In Search of Internet Governance: Performing Order in Digitally Networked Environments. In: New Media & Society, 16(2), 306-322. — Abstract

Internet governance is a difficult horse to catch. Far from being a coherent field of study, it presents itself as scattered across a range of theoretical, methodological, analytical and disciplinary approaches. Internet governance, it seems, is many things at once and thus a rather incoherent enterprise. In this paper, we critically review existing literatures on governance on, of and through the internet and draw attention to the ways in which they help perform the worlds in which they have their place. Retelling the case of the Twitter Joke Trial, we highlight the contingent and at times conflicting roles attributed to actors and technology as well as the concerns that come with these. Rather than striving for a coherent definition of “internet governance”, we argue that acknowledging the performativity of modes of governance has significant implications and can be made productive for both research and practice. Full text here. For the final version, please visit the journal's website here

Pentzold, Christian; Fraas, Claudia & Meier, Stefan (2013): Online-mediale Texte. Kommunikationsformen, Affordanzen, Interfaces. In: Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik, 41(1), 81-101. — Abstract

The internet affords many different types of multimodal and networked communication. That said, the paper asks about the conceptual standing of online texts that are (re-)made, viewed and read in acts of communication. It thus seeks to develop a conceptual approach towards defining online texts as accomplished and enacted sign ensembles that are afforded by communicative settings. To this end, we mobilise insights from linguistics, communication studies as well as sensibilities from the sociology of technology so to combine understandings of media affordances, communicative genres, markers of textuality with a view on the routine work that goes into making and employing texts. Taken together, online texts are understood as visually displayed, interface-sensible, and prefigured sets of signs whose specific designs and coherent and cohesive organisations depend on situations, ways of handling, code, and viewing devices. Full text here. For the final version, please visit the journal's website here

Pentzold, Christian (2011): Imagining the Wikipedia Community. What do Wikipedia authors mean when they write about their community? In: New Media & Society, 13(5), 704-721. — Abstract

This article examines the way Wikipedia authors write their ‘community’ into being. Mobilizing concepts regarding the communicative constitution of communities, the computer-mediated conversation between editors were investigated using Grounded Theory procedures. The analysis yielded an empirically grounded theory of the users’ self-understanding of the Wikipedia community as ethos-action community. Hence, this study contributes to research on online community-building as it shifts the focus from structural criteria for communities to the discursive level of community formation. Full text here. For the final version, please refer to the journal's website here

Pentzold, Christian & Sommer, Vivien (2011): Digital networked media and social memory. Theoretical foundations and implications. In: Aurora. Revista de Arte, Mídia e Política, 10 (2011), 72-85. — Abstract

The article discusses the potential of the internet and especially of the world wide web as a medium for collective remembrance. First, the theoretical ground is laid by outlining three concepts of memory. Here, the emphasis lies on how media are conceptualized in relation to cultural memory. In a second step, these theoretical premises are connected to an understanding of discourse as social cognition. As such, we argue, it forms the integral part of memory work and can also have its place in computer-mediated communication. On this basis, the web is viewed as a medium of and for memory work constituted by discursive practices which form cultural memory. Full text here

Pentzold, Christian (2009): Fixing the Floating Gap. The Online Encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a Global Memory Place. In: Memory Studies 2(2), 255-272 — Abstract

The article proposes to interpret the web-based encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a global memory place. After presenting the core elements and basic characteristics of wikis and Wikipedia respectively, the article discusses four related issues of social memory studies: collective memory, communicative and cultural memory, `memory places' and the `floating gap'. In a third step, these theoretical premises are connected to the understanding of discourse as social cognition. Fourth, comparison is made between the potential of the World Wide Web as cyberspace for collective remembrance and the obstacles that stand in its way. On this basis, the article argues that Wikipedia presents a global memory place where memorable elements are negotiated. Its complex processes of discussion and article creation are a model of the discursive fabrication of memory. Thus, they can be viewed and analysed as the transition, the `floating gap' between communicative and collective frames of memory. Full text here. For the final version, please visit the journal's website here

Pentzold, Christian; Seidenglanz, Sebastian; Fraas, Claudia & Ohler, Peter (2007): Wikis. Bestandsaufnahme eines Forschungsfeldes und Skizzierung eines integrativen Analyserahmens. In: Medien und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 55(1), 61-79. — Abstract

Wikis als social software und Form netzbasierten kollaborativen Arbeitens markieren einen entscheidenden Schritt in der jüngeren Geschichte des Webs. In Funktionsumfang und Popularität lassen sie bereits jetzt ältere Generationen von Webangeboten hinter sich und ebnen den Weg für neue Formen virtueller Interaktion. Der vorliegende Beitrag erschließt dieses für die Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaften fruchtbringende Forschungsfeld, indem er einen Überblick über die bisherige Wiki-Forschung, insbesondere im Blick auf die Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia, gibt. Darüber hinaus skizziert er die Ansätze eines integrativen Analyserahmens, der die Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia aus einer medienlinguistischen und mediensoziologischen Sicht als soziales System konzeptualisiert. Dabei werden zum Stand der Forschung strukturierungstheoretische und genreklassifikatorische, handlungs- und konsensorientierte sowie informationstechnische Ansätze ebenso dargestellt wie Arbeiten zur Informationsqualität, zu Nutzerklassifikationen und Motivlagen. Full text here

Pentzold, Christian (2007): Machtvolle Wahrheiten. Diskursive Wissensgenerierung in Wikipedia aus Foucault'scher Perspektive. In: kommunikation@gesellschaft.Abstract

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit den diskursiven Prozessen der Wissenskonstitution in Wikipedia. Den theoretischen Rahmen dafür bildet Foucaults Konzept einer ‚genealogischen’ Analyse von Macht/Wissen-Regimen. In einem ersten Schritt werde ich zunächst das allgemeine Wiki-Prinzip und die Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia im Speziellen knapp skizzieren. Daran anschließend entfaltet der Artikel zweitens den theoretischen Hintergrund, indem zunächst Typen, Ebenen und Funktionen des Widerspruches, wie sie Foucault in der Archäologie des Wissens anführt, präsentiert werden. Darauf aufbauend setze ich mich drittens mit Foucaults Überlegungen zum Konzept ‚Genealogie’ auseinander. Neben den in der Ordnung des Diskurses postulierten Kontrollprozeduren in Diskursen sollen weiterführend die von ihm nur in Zügen umrissenen Ideen bezüglich diskursiver Rituale und Diskursensembles vorgestellt werden. Im Anschluss daran diskutiere ich Macht/Wissen als zentrales Element seiner Argumentation. Viertens werden anhand zweier Beispielpassagen aus der Diskussionsseite des Wikipedia-Artikels „Verschwörungstheorie“ die Mechanismen der Exklusionsprozesse und diskursiven Konflikte um Deutungsmacht herausgearbeitet. Dabei wird deutlich, dass in den Wissenskonstitutionsprozessen eines Wikipedia-Artikels diskursive Regime wirksam sind, mittels derer zum einen Aussagen auf ihre Plausibilität und Akzeptabilität hin überprüft, angenommen oder verworfen und zum anderen die äußernden Subjekte bestätigt, diszipliniert und gegebenenfalls ausgeschlossen werden. The full article can be read here.

Chapters and Proceedings

Pentzold, Christian; Hughes, Emma; & Jakob, Alexander (2024). Country Report AUTO-WELF Germany. Automated Decision-Making Processes in German Core and Communal Welfare. Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet, Södertörn University. urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-53265

Pentzold, Christian; Haupt, Benedikt; & Becker, Alexa (in prep.): A future worth wanting: Co-Design Methoden und das Smarte Zuhause. In: Hepp, Andreas; Kannengießer, Sigrid; & Wimmer, Jeffrey (eds.): Zukunft der Medien – Medien der Zukunft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Rothe, Ingmar & Pentzold, Christian (in prep.): Podcasts: Wissenschaft zum Hören. In: Böddeker, Marina & Hochkirchen, Britta (eds.): Wissenschaftskommunikation in interdisziplinären Verbundprojekten. Bielefeld: transcript.

Bischof, Andreas; Haupt, Benedikt; Becker, Alexa, Pentzold, Christian; & Berger, Arne (in prep.): Voraussetzungen, Methoden und Produkte partizipativer Wissenschaftskommunikation am Beispiel von Technik und Alter(n). In: Kernebeck, Sven & Fischer, Florian (eds.): Partizipative Technikentwicklung im Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen. Bern: Hogrefe.

Pentzold, Christian (in prep.): Praktiken kollaborativen Arbeitens und Vergemeinschaftens. In: Androutsopoulos, Jannis & Vogel, Friedemann (eds.): Handbuch Sprache und Digitale Kommunikation. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.

Pentzold, Christian & Lohmeier, Christine (in prep.). Medien, Kultur, Öffentlichkeit. In: Altmeppen, Klaus-Dieter; Klaus, Elisabeth & Röttger, Ulrike (eds): Kommunikationswissenschaft. Eine Einführung in die kommunikativen und medialen Grundlagen der Gesellschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Stein, Veronika & Pentzold, Christian (in prep.): Civic digital participation for rural development. Lessons from a German survey for LEADER regions in Central and Eastern Europe. In: Kolleck, Nina & Karolewski, Pawel I. (eds.): Practices of Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe: Civic Education and Participation. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Stein, Veronika & Pentzold, Christian (2023): Perspectives for Digital Participation in Rural Areas: Evidence From German Regions. In: Lorenz, Astrid & Anders, Lisa A. (eds.): EU Citizenship Beyond Urban Centers: Perceptions and Practices of Young People in East Central European Rural Areas. Cham: Springer Nature, 215-224.

Pentzold, Christian (2023): Digitale Gedächtnisse. In: Berek, Mathias; Chmelar, Kristina; Dimbath, Oliver; Haag, Hanna; Heinlein, Michael; Leonhard, Nina; Rauer, Valentin & Sebald, Gerd (eds.): Handbuch sozialwissenschaftliche Gedächtnisforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 143-158.

Pentzold, Christian; Lohmeier, Christine & Birkner, Thomas (2023): Kommunikatives Erinnern. In: Netzwerk Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Erinnerungsforschung (eds.): Handbuch kommunikationswissenschaftliche Erinnerungsforschung. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 47-70.

Pentzold, Christian; Lohmeier, Christine & Kaun, Anne (2023): Was will, was kann, was soll eine kommunikationswissenschaftliche Erinnerungsforschung? In: Netzwerk Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Erinnerungsforschung (eds.): Handbuch kommunikationswissenschaftliche Erinnerungsforschung. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1-46.

Puschmann, Cornelius & Pentzold, Christian (2022): Was ist das „Internet“? Zur akademischen Karriere eines Schlüsselwortes, 1994 bis 2018. In: Schwarzenegger, Christian; Koenen, Erik; Pentzold, Christian; Birkner, Thomas & Katzenbach, Christian (eds.): Digitale Kommunikation und Kommunikationsgeschichte: Perspektiven, Potentiale, Problemfelder. Digital Communication Research, 91-129. (Open Access). Full article here.

Pentzold, Christian (2022): Die Ordnung des Diskurses: Mit Foucault Macht und Wissen analysieren. In: Spiller, Ralf; Rudeloff, Christian & Döbler, Thomas (eds.): Schlüsselwerke - Theorien(n) der Kommunikationswissenschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 298-308.

Luth, Janine; Marx, Konstanze & Pentzold, Christian (2022): Ethische und rechtliche Aspekte der Analyse von digitalen Diskursen. In: Gredel, Eva & DFG-Netzwerk Diskurse - digital (Eds.): Diskurse - digital: Theorien, Methoden, Fallstudien. Berlin: de Gruyter, 101-136.

Schwarzenegger, Christian; Koenen, Erik; Pentzold, Christian; Birkner, Thomas; & Katzenbach, Christian (2022): Der digitalen Kommunikation eine Vergangenheit geben – Perspektiven und Gegenstände eines überfälligen Unterfangens. In: Schwarzenegger, Christian; Koenen, Erik; Pentzold, Christian; Birkner, Thomas & Katzenbach, Christian (eds.): Digitale Kommunikation und Kommunikationsgeschichte: Perspektiven, Potentiale, Problemfelder. Digital Communication Research, 8-27 (Open Access). Full article here.

Koenen, Erik; Schwarzenegger, Christian; Gentzel, Peter; Kramp, Leif; Pentzold, Christian; & Sanko, Christina (2022): Angekündigte Revolutionen finden statt? Konturen, Probleme und Potentiale kommunikations- und medienhistorischer Forschung in digitalen Kontexten. In: Schwarzenegger, Christian; Koenen, Erik; Pentzold, Christian; Birkner, Thomas & Katzenbach, Christian (eds.): Digitale Kommunikation und Kommunikationsgeschichte: Perspektiven, Potentiale, Problemfelder. Digital Communication Research, 63-90 (Open Access). Full article here.

Döbler, Thomas; Pentzold, Christian; & Katzenbach, Christian (2021): Räume digitaler Kommunikation - eine Einleitung. In: Döbler, Thomas; Pentzold, Christian; & Katzenbach, Christian (eds.): Lokalität - Imagination - Virtualisierung. Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 9-21. Download the introduction here

Bischof, Andreas; Jarke, Juliane; Pentzold, Christian; Stolle, Claudia & Zündel, Matthias (2021). Wie kann partizipative Wissenschaftskommunikation einer alternden digitalen Gesellschaft dienen? In: Wienrich, Carolin; Wintersberger, Philipp & Weyers, Benjamin (eds.): Mensch und Computer 2021, Workshopband. Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik. https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/37423

O'Neil, Mathieu; Toupin, Sophie; & Pentzold, Christian (2021): Making a Case for Peer Production. Interviews with Peter Bloom, Mariam Mecky, Ory Okolloh, Abraham Taherivand, and Stefano Zacchiroli. In: O'Neil, Mathieu; Pentzold, Christian; & Toupin, Sophie (eds.): The Handbook of Peer Production. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 373-387. (also published in Journal of Peer Production, 15)

O'Neil, Mathieu; Toupin, Sophie; & Pentzold, Christian (2021): Be Your Own Peer! Principles and Policies for the Commons In: O'Neil, Mathieu; Pentzold, Christian; & Toupin, Sophie (eds.): The Handbook of Peer Production. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 388-396. Download a pre-print here

O'Neil, Mathieu; Toupin, Sophie; Pentzold, Christian (2021): What’s Next? Peer Production Studies? In: O'Neil, Mathieu; Pentzold, Christian; & Toupin, Sophie (eds.): The Handbook of Peer Production. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 388-396. Download a pre-print here

Pentzold, Christian (2021): Social Norms and Rules in Peer Production. In: O'Neil, Mathieu; Pentzold, Christian; & Toupin, Sophie (eds.): The Handbook of Peer Production. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 44-55. Download a pre-print here

O'Neil, Mathieu; Toupin, Sophie; & Pentzold, Christian (2021): The Duality of Peer Production Infrastructure for the Digital Commons, Free Labor for Free‐Riding Firms In: O'Neil, Mathieu; Pentzold, Christian; & Toupin, Sophie (eds.): The Handbook of Peer Production. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 3-18. Download here

Kaun, Anne; Lohmeier, Christine; Pentzold, Christian (2020): Sketching the field and history of resisting dominant temporal regimes. In: Kaun, Anne; Lohmeier, Christine; Pentzold, Christian (eds.): Making Time for Digital Lives. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1-10.

Pentzold, Christian (2020): Mediendiskursanalyse: Programm und Perspektive der Critical Discourse Analysis. In: Bucher, Hans-Jürgen (ed.): Medienkritik. Zwischen ideologischer Instrumentalisierung und kritischer Aufklärung. Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 21-38.

Fraas, Claudia & Pentzold, Christian (2020): Diskursive Praktiken und die Analyse multimodaler transmedialer Kommunikation. In: Friese, Heidrun; Nolden, Marcus; Rebane, Gala & Schreiter, Miriam (eds): Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 435-445.

Pentzold, Christian & Fölsche, Lena (2019): Die öffentliche Verhandlung von Big Data in politischen Kampagnen. In: Diskurse – digital, 1(2), 39-113. Download here

Pentzold, Christian (2019): Diskursmuster - Diskurspraktiken. Analytische Perspektiven für die kommunikationswissenschaftliche Diskursanalyse. In: Lohmeier, Christine & Wiedemann, Thomas (eds): Diskursanalyse für die Kommunikationswissenschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 19-34.

Fölsche, Lena; Haunss, Sebastian; Hofmann, Jeanette; Pentzold, Christian; & Ulbricht, Lena (2018): Regulierung durch Big Data. Zwischen Kontrolle und Responsivität. ABIDA Working Paper, 01/S15016A-F.

Pentzold, Christian & Fölsche, Lena (2018): Die öffentliche Verhandlung von Big Data in politischen Kampagnen. ABIDA Working Paper, 01/S15016A-F. — Abstract

In dem vorliegenden Gutachten werden die datenbasierten Abbildungsverhältnisse, Regulierungsabsichten und Repräsentationsbeziehungen in der Wahlkampfberichterstattung in Deutschland, Großbritannien und den USA rekonstruiert. Die Verfügbarkeit und Auswertung großer Datensätze, das Entdecken neuer Muster und das Verfolgen sozialer Prozesse in Echtzeit kann beeinflussen, so die ambivalenten Erwartungen in diesem exponierten Anwendungs- und Forschungsfeld politischer Kampagnen, wie das Politische und das Soziale gedacht, verstanden und gesteuert werden können. Download from here

Pentzold, Christian; Katzenbach, Christian; Kannengießer, Sigrid; Taddicken, Monika; & Adolf, Marian (2018): Die ‚neueste Kommunikationswissenschaft‘: Gegenstandsdynamik und Methodeninnovation in Kommunikationsforschung und Medienanalyse. In: Katzenbach, Christian; Pentzold, Christian; Kannengießer, Sigrid; Taddicken, Monika & Adolf, Marian (2018): Neue Komplexitäten für Kommunikationsforschung und Medienanalyse: Analytische Zugänge und empirische Studien. Digital Communication Research (Open Access), 9-22. Full text here

Ulbricht, Lena; Haunss, Sebastian; Hofmann, Jeanette; Klinger, Ulrike; Passoth, Jan-Hendrik; Pentzold, Christian; Schneider, Ingrid; Straßheim, Holger; & Voß, Jan-Peter (2018): Dimensionen von Big Data: Eine politikwissenschaftliche Systematisierung. In: Kolany-Raiser, Barbara; Heil, Reinhard; Ornat, Carsten; & Hören, Thomas (eds): Big Data und Gesellschaft.Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 151-231.

Ziem, Alexander; Pentzold, Christian & Fraas, Claudia (2018): Methode und Praxis der Analyse von Medien-Frames. Linguistische Perspektiven und kommunikationswissenschaftliche Anknüpfungspunkte. In: Ziem, Alexander; Inderelst, Lars & Wulf, Detmer (eds): Frames interdisziplinär: Modelle, Anwendungsfelder, Methoden. Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press, pp. 155-182.

Scheu, Andreas; Bischof, Andreas & Pentzold, Christian (2018): Medienbezogene Lebenswelten mit Grounded Theory erforschen. Ansatzpunkte, Hindernisse und Perspektiven. In: Pentzold, Christian; Bischof, Andreas & Heise, Nele (eds): Praxis Grounded Theory. Ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 299-313.

Pentzold, Christian & Fraas, Claudia (2018): Verbale und visuelle Medienframes im Verfahrensrahmen der Grounded Theory analysieren. In: Scheu, Andreas M. (ed): Auswertung qualitativer Daten in der Kommunikationswissenschaft. Strategien, Verfahren und Methoden der Interpretation nicht-standardisierter Daten in der Kommunikationswissenschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 227-246.

Pentzold, Christian; Bischof, Andreas & Heise, Nele (2018): Theoriegenerierendes empirisches Forschen in medienbezogenen Lebenswelten. In: Pentzold, Christian; Bischof, Andreas & Heise, Nele (eds): Praxis Grounded Theory. Ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 1-22.

Pentzold, Christian (2017): Wikipedia und Wissenschaftskommunikation. In: Weingart, Peter; Wormer, Holger; Wenninger, Andreas; & Hüttl, Reinhard E. (eds.): Perspektiven der Wissenschaftskommunikation im digitalen Zeitalter. Weilerswist: Velbrück, 116-122.

Pentzold, Christian & Gentzel, Peter (2017): Dimensionen und Implikationen historischer Kommunikationsforschung. In: Digitizing Communication History Initiative. 06/06/2017. Full text here.

Pentzold, Christian (2017): (How do we) Care about ISIS partisans? In: Kinder-Kurlanda, Katharina & Zimmer, Michael (eds): Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts. New York: Peter Lang, 73.

Pentzold, Christian (2017): Recontextualizing privacy in context. In: Kinder-Kurlanda, Katharina & Zimmer, Michael (eds): Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts. New York: Peter Lang, 54.

Pentzold, Christian (2017): Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Konzepte und Methoden der Analyse von Frames in politischer Kommunikation. In: Roth, Kersten Sven; Wengeler, Martin & Ziem, Alexander (eds): Handbuch Sprache in Politik und Gesellschaft. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 514-532.

Müller-Birn, Claudia; Schlegel, Alexa & Pentzold, Christian (2016): Softwarenutzung in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungspraxis. In: Prinz, Wolfgang; Borchers, Jan & Jacke, Martina (eds): Mensch & Computer 2016. Munich: Oldenbourg. The full article can be found here.

Weller, Anja & Pentzold, Christian (2016): Empfehlungen zur Unterstützung informellen Lernens: Durchführung von Schulungen. In: Kahnwald, Nina; Albrecht, Steffen; Herbst, Sabrina & Köhler, Thomas in collaboration with Fraas, Claudia; Gerth, Michael; Morgner, Sven; Kawalek, Jürgen; Pentzold, Christian; Saupe, Volker; Schwendel, Jens; Stark, Annegret; Weller, Anja & Welz, Tobias (eds.): Informelles Lernen Studierender mit Social Software unterstützen. Strategische Empfehlungen für Hochschulen. Münster, New York: Waxmann, 84-91.

Pentzold, Christian, Lohmeier, Christine & Hajek, Andrea (2016): Introduction: Remembering and reviving in states of flux. In: Hajek, Andrea; Lohmeier, Christine & Pentzold, Christian (eds): Memory in a Mediated World: Rememberance and Reconstruction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1-12. Full text here

Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan; Pentzold, Christian & Sommer, Vivien (2015): Wzorce dyskursu – praktyki dyskursu. Instrumentarium metodyczne do jakościowej analizy dyskursu. In: Opiłowski, Roman; Jarosz, Józef & Staniewski, Przemysław (eds): Lingwistyka mediów. Antologia tłumaczeń. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, 225-280 (= Diskursmuster – Diskurspraktiken. Ein Methodeninstrumentarium qualitativer Diskursforschung; in Polish translation).

Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (2015): Wprowadzenie: perspektywy interdyscyplinarnych transmedialnych badań nad dyskursem. In: Opiłowski, Roman; Jarosz, Józef & Staniewski, Przemysław (eds): Lingwistyka mediów. Antologia tłumaczeń. Wrocław: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, 199-220 (= Zur Einführung: Perspektiven einer interdisziplinären transmedialen Diskursforschung; in Polish translation).

Fraas, Claudia & Pentzold, Christian (2015): Diskursanalyse. In: Averbeck-Lietz, Stefanie & Meyen, Michael (eds): Handbuch nicht-standardisierte Methoden in der Kommunikationswissenschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 227-240.

Pentzold, Christian & Fraas, Claudia (2015): Framing Big Data: Methode und Ergebnisse einer multimodalen, transmedialen Diskursanalyse der Handygate-Affäre 2011. In: Hahn, Oliver; Hohlfeld, Ralf & Knieper, Thomas (eds): Digitale Öffentlichkeit(en). Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft. Konstanz, Munich: UVK, 65-84.

Pentzold, Christian (2015): Forschungsethische Prämissen und Problemfelder teilnehmenden Beobachtens auf Online-Plattformen. In: Maireder, Axel; Ausserhofer, Julian; Schumann, Christina & Taddicken, Monika (eds): Digitale Methoden in der Kommunikationswissenschaft. Open Access series: Digital Communication Research, 53-77. Full text here

Pentzold, Christian; Katzenbach, Christian & Fraas, Claudia (2014): Digitale Plattformen und Öffentlichkeiten mediatisierter politischer Kommunikation. In: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (APuZ), 22-23/14, 28-34. Full text here

Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (2014): Diskurs in den Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaften. In: Angermüller, Johannes; Herschinger, Eva; Nonhoff, Martin; Macgilchrist, Felicitas; Reisigl, Martin; Wedl, Juliette; Wrana, Daniel & Ziem, Alexander (eds): Kompendium Interdisziplinäre Diskursforschung. Bielefeld: transcript, 118-129.

Pentzold, Christian (2014): Entries on "Datenanalysesoftware", "Deutungsmuster", "Grounded Theory", "Inhaltsanalyse (quantitativ)", "Medium". In: Wrana, Daniel; Ziem, Alexander; Reisigl, Martin; Nonhoff, Martin & Angermüller, Johannes (eds): DiskursNetz. Wörterbuch der interdisziplinären Diskursforschung. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 62-63, 68-69, 171-172, 197-198, 261-262.

Escher, Tobias; Pentzold, Christian & Fraas, Claudia (2013): Können digitale Medien die Demokratie verbessern? In: 50 Fragen, 50 Antworten, 50 Jahre Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft. Eichstätt/Hamburg: DGPuK, 82-83. Full text here

Pentzold, Christian (2013): Geschlossene Gesellschaft? Wikipedia zwischen Freiheit und Kontrolle. In: Dossier der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Full text here

Sommer, Vivien; Fraas, Claudia ; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (2013): Qualitative Online-Diskursanalyse. Werkstattbericht eines Mixed-Method-Ansatzes zur Analyse multimodaler Deutungsmuster. In: Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (eds): Online-Diskurse. Theorien und Methoden transmedialer Diskursforschung. Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 258-284.

Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (2013): Zur Einführung: Perspektiven einer interdisziplinären transmedialen Diskursforschung. In: Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (eds): Online-Diskurse. Theorien und Methoden transmedialer Diskursforschung. Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 7-34. Full text here

Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan; Pentzold, Christian & Sommer, Vivien (2013): Diskursmuster - Diskurspraktiken. Ein Methodeninstrumentarium qualitativer Diskursforschung. In: Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (eds): Online-Diskurse. Theorien und Methoden transmedialer Diskursforschung. Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 102-136.

Albrecht, Steffen; Herbst, Sabrina; Köhler, Thomas; Weller, Anja; Fraas, Claudia; Gerth, Michael; Kahnwald, Nina; Kawalek, Jürgen; Pentzold, Christian; Saupe, Volker; Schwendel, Jens; Stark, Annegret & Welz, Tobias (2011): Empfehlungen zur Unterstützung informellen Lernens durch Social Software. In: Hering, Klaus; Kawalek, Jürgen & Schaar, Florian (eds): Wissenslandschaften gestalten. Tagungsband zum Workshop on e-Learning 2011. HTWK Leipzig, 24.-25. Oktober 2011. Leipzig: HTWK

Albrecht, Steffen; Fraas, Claudia; Gerth, Michael; Herbst, Sabrina; Kahnwald, Nina; Kawalek, Jürgen; Köhler, Thomas; Pentzold, Christian; Saupe, Volker; Schwendel, Jens; Stark, Annegret; Weller, Anja & Welz, Tobias (2011): Web 2.0 in der akademischen Praxis. Herausforderungen und strategische Optionen. In: Köhler, Thomas & Neumann, Jörg (eds): Wissensgemeinschaften. Digitale Medien – Öffnung und Offenheit in Forschung und Lehre. Münster et al.: Waxmann, 375-377.

Pentzold, Christian (2011): Vermisste Massen? Digitale vernetzte Medien und die Theorie der kritischen Masse. In: Hartmann, Maren & Wimmer, Jeffrey (eds): Digitale Medientechnologien. Wiesbaden: VS, 99-126. Full text here

Fraas, Claudia; Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (2010): Konvergenz an den Schnittstellen unterschiedlicher Kommunikationsformen. Ein Frame-basierter analytischer Zugriff. In: Bucher, Hans-Jürgen; Gloning, Thomas & Lehnen, Katrin (eds): Neue Medien – neue Formate. Ausdifferenzierung und Konvergenz in der Medienkommunikation. Frankfurt a. M., New York: Campus, 227-256.

Meier, Stefan & Pentzold, Christian (2010): Theoretical Sampling als Auswahlstrategie für Online-Inhaltsanalysen. In: Welker, Martin & Wünsch, Carsten (eds): Die Online-Inhaltsanalyse. Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 124-143. Full text here

Meier, Stefan; Wünsch, Carsten; Pentzold, Christian & Welker, Martin (2010): Auswahlverfahren für Online-Inhalte. In: Welker, Martin & Wünsch, Carsten (eds): Die Online-Inhaltsanalyse. Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 103-123. Full text here

Welker, Martin; Wünsch, Carsten; Bock, Annekatrin; Böcking, Saskia; Friedemann, Anne; Herbers, Martin; Pentzold, Christian & Schweitzer, Eva Johanna (2010): Die Online-Inhaltsanalyse: methodische Herausforderung aber ohne Alternative. In: Welker, Martin & Wünsch, Carsten (eds): Die Online-Inhaltsanalyse. Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 9-30.

Stark, Annegret; Albrecht, Steffen; Fraas, Claudia; Gerth, Michael; Kahnwald, Nina; Kawalek, Jürgen; Köhler, Thomas; Morgner, Sven; Pentzold, Christian; Saupe, Volker; Schwendel, Jens; Weller, Anja & Welz, Tobias (2010): Unterstützung informeller Lernprozesse mit Social Software. In: Albrecht, Friedrich (ed): Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on e-Learning (WeL’10), Zittau, Görlitz, 99-106.

Pentzold, Christian (2010): 'Make truth laugh'. The Novels of Umberto Eco in the Context of his Theory of Humour. In: Chamayou, Anne & Duncan, Alastair B. (eds): Le Rire Européen - European Laughter. Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 401-420.

Pentzold, Christian (2009): Viel Licht, viel Schatten? Darstellung und Güte der Informationen in der Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia. In: Neue Stenographische Praxis, 3/2009, 80-86.

Fraas, Claudia & Pentzold, Christian (2008): Online-Diskurse. Theoretische Prämissen, methodische Anforderungen und analytische Befunde. In: Warnke, Ingo & Spitzmüller, Jürgen (eds): Methoden der Diskurslinguistik. Sprachwissenschaftliche Zugänge zur transtextuellen Ebene. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 291-326. Full text here

Pentzold, Christian (2008): Wikipedia. In: Albrow, Martin; Anheier, Helmut; Glasius, Marlies; Price, Monroe & Kaldor, Mary (eds): Global Civil Society 2007/08: Communicative Power and Democracy. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage, 234-235.

Pentzold, Christian & Seidenglanz, Sebastian (2006): Foucault@Wiki. First Steps Towards a Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of Wiki Discourses. In: Proceedings of the WikiSym, San Diego, CA: ACM Press, 59-68. Full text here

Talks

with Eedan Amit-Danhi & Thomas Rakebrand: Between graphical 'excellence‘, literacy, and polysemy: A bi-national study of political visualization reception (2024, September). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

with Aljosha Karim Schapals: Media systems beyond journalism. Placing peripheral newsmaking on the map (2024, September). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

with Andreas Hepp, Katharina Heitmann-Werner, Andrea Grahl, Leif Kramp, Alexander Ohlei, Wiebke Loosen & Bartje Krüger: Lokale Nachrichtenplattformen für die Smart City? Ein agiles Sozialexperiment zu den Herausforderungen einer Plattform für digitale Stadtöffentlichkeit (2024, June). Konferenz "Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf die Smart City (IPSC 2024)", Kaiserslautern, Germany.

with Andreas Hepp, Katharina Heitmann-Werner, Andrea Grahl, Leif Kramp, Alexander Ohlei, Wiebke Loosen & Bartje Krüger (2024, July). It takes a town to build an app: Local news abundance, citizen-centered innovation, and platform cooperativism. IAMCR Annual Meeting, Christchurch, N.Z.

with Eedan Amit-Danhi & Thomas Rakebrand (2024, July). Between graphical 'excellence‘, literacy, and polysemy: A bi-national study of political visualization reception. IAMCR Annual Meeting, Christchurch, N.Z.

with Charlotte Knorr: Making Sense of “Big Data”: Ten Years of Discourse Around Datafication in South Africa, Germany, and the United States (2024, June). ICA Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia (full paper; Mass Communication Division).

with Veronika Stein: Digital Political Participation for Rural Development: Necessary Conditions and Cultures of Participation (2024, June). ICA Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia (full paper; Philosophy, Theory & Critique Division).

with Eedan Amit-Danhi & Nik Krämer: A Holistic Framework for the Analysis of Predictive Rhetoric in Digital Visualizations (2024, June). ICA Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia (full paper; Visual Communication Division).

with Andreas Hepp, Katharina Heitmann-Werner, Andrea Grahl, Leif Kramp, Alexander Ohlei, Wiebke Loosen & Bartje Krüger: Lokale Nachrichtenplattformen für ein besseres Leben? Ein agiles Sozialexperiment zu den Herausforderungen des „exit to community“ und „platform cooperativism (2024, March). DGPuK Annual Conference, Erfurt, Germany.

with Doris Allhutter, Emma Hughes & Sebastian Sosnowski (2023, October). AI in Welfare: public policies, public interest, and political mandate. AoIR 2023, Philadelphia, USA.

with Alexa Becker, Benedikt Haupt & Arne Berger: Workshop - Designing alternative future home stories (2023, September). Informatik Festival 2023, Berlin.

with Doris Allhutter, Anila Alushi, Monika Berdys, Emma Hughes, Maris Männiste & Sebastian Sosnowski: AI in Welfare: public policies, public interest, and political mandate (2023, September). KI2023 Workshop on AI Systems for the Public Interest, Berlin.

with Anila Alushi, Emma Hughes & Alice Mattoni: Towards a mapping of ADM systems in 4 European countries (2023, September). 6th ESPAnet Italy Conference, University of Milan.

with Charlotte Knorr, Andreas Niekler & Marius Behret: Cultural Motifs on #bigdata - A Semi-Automated Topic Modeling from a Socio-Cultural Constructionist Perspective (2023, July). ADHO Digital Humanities Conference, Graz, Austria.

with Paloma Viejo Otero and Christian Katzenbach: Imperfect automation and the human fix (2023, June). Global Perspectives on Platforms, Labor & Social Reproduction Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

with Alexa Becker, Benedikt Haupt and Arne Berger: Smart Homes for Smart People? Crafting Stories for Machine-Assisted Domestic Lives Outside of the Industry Blueprint (2023, June). 20th Anniversary Conference 'Media Futures', LSE, U.K.

with Anne, Kaun, Stine Lomborg, Doris Alhutter and Karolina Sztandar-Sztanderska: The data welfare state and inequality (2023, May). Technology in Movement, Movement in Technology Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark.

with Anne Kaun & Stine Lomborg: The data welfare state and inequality (2023, May). ICA Preconference, ICA Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada.

with Christian Katzenbach and Paloma Viejo Otero (2023, May). Der “Human Fix“ und die Illusion der Automatisierung: Zur Rolle menschlicher Arbeit in der kommunikativen KI. Annual Meeting of the DGPuK, Bremen, Germany.

with Charlotte Knorr: The Craft of Data Scandals. Reassessing Contemporary Whistleblowing as Media Events (2023, May). ICA Preconference on the Legacies of Elihu Katz, ICA Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada.

with Nina Altmaier, Verena Honkomp-Wilkens, Katrin Klieme, & Karsten D. Wolf: Is There a Gendered Response to YouTube Tutorials? (2023, May). ICA Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada (full paper; Children & Media Division).

with Charlotte Knorr: When Data Became Big: Revisiting the Rise of an Obsolete Keyword (2023, May). ICA Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada (full paper; Communication History Division).

with Patrick Donges & Christian P. Hoffmann: The Persistence and Contingency of Centers and Peripheries: A Relational Concept of the Digital Public Sphere (2023, May). ICA Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada (full paper; Philosophy, Theory and Critique Division).

with Caroline Wehrmann, Ingmar Rothe and Andreas Bischof: Roundtable: Bringing Living Labs to Life: Fulfilling the promise of open, active, and innovative public science engagement (2023, June). Public Communications of Science and Technology Conference, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

with Andreas Bischof and Ingmar Rothe: Living Labs as Third Spaces: Low-threshold participation, empowering hospitality, and the social infrastructures of continuous presence (2023, April). Public Communications of Science and Technology Conference, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

with Patrick Donges and Christian P. Hoffmann: (Gegen-)Öffentlichkeit als Relationen von Zentren und Peripherien (2023, March). Jahrestagung der Fachgruppe Kommunikationsgeschichte der DGPuK, Leipzig, Germany.

with Ingmar Rothe and Andreas Bischof: Living Labs as Third Spaces: Low-threshold participation, empowering hospitality, and the social infrastructures of continuous presence (2023, March). 1st International Conference on Hybrid Societies, Chemnitz, Germany.

with Eedan Amit-Danhi & Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt (2022, November). The Shape of the Future: A Holistic Framework for Analyzing Predictive Visualization Rhetoric. AoIR 2022, Dublin, Ireland.

with Christian Katzenbach (2022, October). Smoothing Out Smart Tech’s Rough Edges: Imperfect Automation and the Human Fix. ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Aarhus, Denmark.

with Charlotte Knorr & Margitta Wolter (2022, October). Whistleblower Memoires: Deconstructing the Rhetorical Signature of High-Profile Disinformation Producers’ Insider Stories. ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Aarhus, Denmark.

with Veronika Stein: Un/smart Villages. Technological Resources and Human Obstacles for Rural Development Schemes (2022, July). IAMCR Annual Conference, Beijing, China (Virtual Conference).

with Charlotte Knorr: When Data Became Big: Business Hyperbole, Intellectual Straw Fires, and the Rise of an Obsolete Keyword (2022, July). IAMCR Annual Conference, Beijing, China (Virtual Conference).

with Allhutter, Doris; Kaun, Anne; Lomborg, Stine; & Sztandar-Sztanderska, Karolina: Infrastructures of Welfare (2022, July). Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST'22) Workshop, Madrid, Spain

with Charlotte Knorr & Margitta Wolter: Exposing Data Power: Secrecy, Revelation, and Outrage in Whistleblowing Scandals (2022, June). Data Power Conference 2022, Bremen, Germany.

Corona Waves: The Suggestive Rhetoric of Bell-Shaped Curves (2022, May). ICA Annual Conference, Paris, France. (panel paper submission; Visual Communication section)

with Eedan Amit-Danhi: Seeing the Future on the News: Journalistic Visualizations of COVID-19 Measures and Predictions (2022, May). ICA Annual Conference, Paris, France. (panel submission; Visual Communication section)

with Anna Seikel, Erik Koenen & Jakob Jünger: Talking the Talk But Not Walking the Walk: A Study of ICA Presidential Addresses (2022, May). ICA Annual Conference, Paris, France (full paper; Communication History Division).

with Denise Fechner: Predictive Data Stories: Typology of a Nascent Data-Journalistic Genre (2022, May). ICA Annual Conference, Paris, France (full paper; Journalism Division). ICA Journalism Studies Division Top Faculty Paper Award.

with Ingmar Rothe: Robot Imaginaries: Visual Scenarios as Diegetic Futurscapes of Human-Robot Encounters (2022, May). ICA Annual Conference, Paris, France (full paper; Visual Communication Division).

with Alexa Becker, Benedikt Haupt, Arne Berger, Albrecht Kurze, Dries De Roeck, Jesse Josua Benjamin, Simone Mora. Diversifying Approaches to Co-Designing the Smart Everyday (2021, November). Congress of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR), Hong Kong, China. Read the paper here

with Denise Fechner & Conrad Zuber: „Spott per Filzstift“: Politische Grenzziehung und kreative Umgestaltung in der #Sharpiegate-Affäre (2021, November). Jahrestagung der DGPUK Fachgruppe Visuelle Kommunikation, Trier, Germany

with Ingmar Rothe: Drawn into the Future. The Epistemic Work Visual Scenarios Do in Configuring Human-Machine Encounters (2021, October). Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada (Virtual Conference).

with Denise Fechner: Lessons from #Sharpiegate. Redrawing the lines of veracity, speculation, and the political in a post-truth era (2021, September). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Braga, Portugal (Virtual Conference).

with Nina Altmaier & Ricarda Bolten: “I learned that from youtube.” How young users geek out with user-generated video tutorials (2021, September). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Braga, Portugal (Virtual Conference).

with Denise Fechner: Predictive Storytelling. Typology of a New Data Journalistic Genre (2021, September). Future of Journalism Conference, Cardiff, U.K. (Virtual Conference)

with Nina Altmaier, Verena Honkomp-Wilkens, Patrick Jung, Katrin Kieme & Karsten D. Wolf (2021, July). Is There a Gendered Response to YouTube Tutorials? Self-representation And Commenting Behavior Around Extracurricular Educational Content. IAMCR Annual Conference, Nairobi, Kenia (Virtual Conference).

with Veronika Stein: Digitalizing Rural Development Processes. A Systematic Review of Scientific Journals, 2010–2020 (2021, July). IAMCR Annual Conference, Nairobi, Kenia (Virtual Conference).

with Andreas Bischof: Achieving Agency within Imperfect Automation: Working Customers and Self-Service Checkout (2021, July). Conference: Agency in a Datafied Society, University of Bremen, Germany (Virtual Conference).

with Conrad Zuber & Denise Fechner: “Flatten the Curve”: Data-driven Projections and the Journalistic Brokering of Knowledge During the COVID-19 Crisis (2021, May). ICA Annual Conference, Denver, USA (full paper; Journalism Division) (Virtual Conference).

with Conrad Zuber, Florian Osterloh & Denise Fechner: How to Make Sense of Nonsense: Political Absurdity and Parodic Memes in the #Sharpiegate Affair (2021, May). ICA Annual Conference, Denver, USA (full paper; Visual Communication Division) (Virtual Conference).

with Denise J. Fechner: Zukunftsorientiertes Storytelling. Typologie eines neuen datenjournalistischen Genres (2021, April). Three-country Conference in Communication Research, Zurich, Switzerland (Virtual Conference).

with Nina Altmaier & Karsten D. Wolf: „YouTube klärt.“ Jugendliche Nutzungspräferenzen, Entdeckungsstrategien und Auswahlmechanismen von Videotutorials und Erklärvideos (2021, April). Three-country Conference in Communication Research, Zurich, Switzerland (Virtual Conference).

with Ingmar Rothe: Science Busking, Recursivity, and Zones of Awkward Engagement in a Large-Scale Research Project on Embodied Digital Technology (2020, August). Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) Joint Meeting, Prague, Czech Republic (Virtual Conference).

with Arne Berger: New Stories from the Home: Invoked Contexts and Experiential Arguments in Wayward Design Processes (2020, August). Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) Joint Meeting, Prague, Czech Republic (Virtual Conference).

with Arne Berger, Jesse Benjamin & Albrecht Kurze: Ambiguous Connectors (2020, July). Expressive/Sensitive Workshop, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands (Virtual Conference).

with Nina Altmaier: YouTube Tutorials and Teenage Users: Results from a Representative Survey among German Pupils (2020, July). IAMCR Annual Conference, Tampere, Finland (Virtual Conference).

with Sebastian Konieczko, Florian Osterloh & Ann-Christin Ploeger: #qualitytime: Aspiring to Temporal Autonomy in Harried Leisure (2020, May). ICA Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia (full paper; Popular Communication section) (Virtual Conference).

Mundane Work for Utopian Ends: Freeing Digital Materials in Peer Production (2020, May). ICA Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia (full paper; Philosophy, Theory and Critique section) (Virtual Conference).

with Cornelius Puschmann: A Field Comes of Age: Tracking Research on the Internet within Communication Studies, 1994 to 2018 (2020, May). ICA Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia (full paper; Communication and Technology section) (Virtual Conference).

Institutionelle Arbeit. Eine praxistheoretische Perspektive für den kommunikativen Institutionalismus (2019, September). Workshop Series Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Perspektiven des Institutionalismus, Zurich University, Switzerland.

with Lena Fölsche: Data-Driven Campaigns in Public Sensemaking: Discursive Positions, Contextualization, and Maneuvers in American, British, and German Debates Around Computational Politics (2019, September). Data Power Conference, Bremen University, Germany

with Denise Fechner: Modelling the Future. Probabilistic storytelling and professional boundary work in predictive data journalism (2019, September). Future of Journalism Conference, Cardiff, U.K.

with Christina Sanko & Manuel Menke: Communicating Memories: What can communication research learn from memory studies, and vice versa? (2019, June). Third Annual Memory Studies Association Conference, Madrid, Spain.

with Lena Fölsche: Data-Driven Campaigns in Public Sensemaking: Equivocality, Speculation, and a Delayed Scandal in American, British, and German Media Discourse Around Computational Politics (2019, May). ICA Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. (full paper; Political Communication section)

with Andreas Bischof: Making Affordances Real: Socio-Material Prefiguration, Performed Agency, and Coordinated Activities in Human-Robot Communication (2019, May). ICA Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. (full paper; Philosophy, Theory and Critique section)

with Vivien Sommer: Remembering John/Ivan Demjanjuk: Inclusive and Exclusive Frames in Transcultural Holocaust Discourse (2019, May). ICA Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. (full paper; Intercultural Communication section)

with Lena Fölsche: Data-Driven Campaigns in Public Sensemaking: Equivocality, Speculation, and a Delayed Scandal in American, British, and German Media Discourse Around Computational Politics (2019, March). Big Data and the Power of Narrative Workshop, Copenhagen, Denmark.

with Denise Fechner: Data Journalism’s Many Futures: Past records, extrapolation, and probable scenarios in data-driven news making (2019, March). Memories of the Future Conference, University of London School of Advanced Study, Senate House, London, UK

with Cornelius Puschmann: Was ist das Internet? Zur akademischen Karriere eines Schlüsselwortes, 1994-2018 (2019, January). Gemeinsame Jahrestagung der DGPuK-Fachgruppen Digitale Kommunikation und Kommunikationsgeschichte, Bremen, Germany.

with Vivien Sommer: Translating Memories. The Demjanjuk Trial in Russian, Dutch, German, and U.S. press and social media discourse (2018, November). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Lugano, Switzerland.

with Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt: The Future in Data Journalism (2018, November). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Lugano, Switzerland.

with Lena Fölsche: Die diskursive Verhandlung von Big Data in politischen Kampagnen. Ein Ländervergleich Deutschland, Großbritannien und die USA (2018, September). Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Angewandte Linguistik (GAL), Essen, Germany

with Andreas Bischof: Making Affordances Real: Multiplicity, Agency, and Action Cascades in Sociomaterial Prefiguration (2018, June). Symposium Rethinking Affordances, Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany.

with Manuel Menke: Social practices, communicative practices, discursive practices: Formulating an analytical distinction (2018, May). ICA 2018 Preconference: Articulating Voice. Sponsored by ICA's Philosophy, Theory and Critique Section, Prague, Czech Republic.

with Cornelia Brantner & Lena Fölsche: Imagining Big Data: Illustrations of Big Data in U.S. News Articles 2010-2016 (2018, May). ICA Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic. (full paper; Visual Communication section)

with Wolfgang Reissmann & Christian Katzenbach: Distributed voices. Making collaborative authorship in/visible (2018, May). ICA Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic. (panel submission; Popular Communication section)

Multimodal framing through the lens of practice theory (2018, May). ICA Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic. (paper in panel; Visual Communication section)

with Wolfang Reissmann & Christian Katzenbach: Confronting Collaborative Authorship in Wikipedia, Game Production, and Fanfiction (2018, May). ICA Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic. (paper in panel; Popular Communication section)

with Ulrike Klinger: Reading the powerful rhetorics of ‘big data’ in political discourse (2017, December). IPSA/AISP 2017 International Conference Political Science in the Digital Age, Hanover, Germany

with Lena Fölsche & Cornelia Brantner: Imagining Big Data (2017, November). Conference Visualizing (in) the New Media, Fribourg, Switzerland

Was meinen wir eigentlich, wenn wir von medialen Praktiken sprechen? (2017, October). Conference "Medien- und Kommunikationssoziologie: Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft", Friedrichshafen, Germany

Achieving alternative peer production through mundane routines, encyclopedic ideologies, and regimes of qualification (2017, August). ESA Annual Conference, Athens, Greece

with Ulrike Klinger: Reading the powerful rhetorics of ‘big data’ in political discourse (2017, May). ICA 2017 Preconference: Power, communication, and technology in Internet governance. Sponsored by ICA's Philosophy, Theory and Critique Section, San Diego, U.S.A.

Ethical Premises and Practical Judgment in Internet-Based Ethnography (2017, May). ICA Annual Conference, San Diego, U.S.A. (full paper; Communication and Technology section)

Editorial Surveillance and the Management of Visibility in Peer Production (2017, May). ICA Annual Conference, San Diego, U.S.A. (full paper; Philosophy, Theory and Critique section)

Taking on the Practice Lens in Culturalistic Studies of Communication and Media (2017, May). ICA Annual Conference, San Diego, U.S.A. (full paper; Philosophy, Theory and Critique section)

Diskursmuster – Diskurspraktiken. Makro- und Mikro-Perspektiven für die kommunikationswissenschaftliche Diskursanalyse (2017, April). Conference "Diskursanalyse in der Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung“, Munich, Germany

with Christine Lohmeier: Mediated memory work in transnational mediascapes: Conceptualizing media-related remembering practices (2016, November). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic

with Christine Lohmeier: Reflexive Remembrance and Reconstruction: Conceptualizing Retrospective and Prospective Mediated Memory Work (2016, November). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Prague, Czech Republic

with Müller-Birn, Claudia & Schlegel, Alexa: Softwarenutzung in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungspraxis (2016, September). Mensch & Computer 2016, Aachen, Germany

How do societies remember joyful events? Response to panel on Cultural Memories of Nonviolent Struggles (2016, July). Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Leicester, U.K.

with Christine Lohmeier: Reflexive Remembrance and Reconstruction in Mediated Times (2016, July). Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Leicester, U.K. (full paper)

with Christine Lohmeier: Moving Memories: Remembering and Reviving in a Mediated World (2016, July). Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Leicester, U.K. (panel submission)

with Shani Horowitz-Rozen, Vivien Sommer & Shlomo Shpiro: Memory Frames of Nazi War Crimes in Transnational Media Spaces. The Demjanjuk Trials in Israeli, German, U.S., Dutch, and Russian Media Discourse (2016, July). Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Leicester, U.K. (full paper)

Performing Internet Governance (2016, June). ICA 2016 Preconference: Power, communication, and technology in Internet governance. Co-Sponsored by ICA's Communication Law and Policy, and Communication and Technology Divisions, Tokyo, Japan (full paper)

with Christian Katzenbach: Theorien der Kommunikationswissenschaft zwischen Komplexitätssteigerung und Komplexitätsreduzierung (2016, April). DGPuK Annual Conference, Leipzig, Germany

with Vivien Sommer: Analyzing multimodal digital discourse. Methodological foundations, methodical approaches, and research practices for studying discourse in convergent media (2015, November). Conference "Approaches to Digital Discourse Analysis", Valencia, Spain (panel submission)

with Christine Lohmeier: Mediated Memory Work: Conceptual grounding and empirical analysis of media-related remembering practices (2015, September). Conference "Changing Platforms of Memory Practices. Technologies, User Generations and Amateur Media Dispositifs", Groningen, The Netherlands

with Claudia Fraas & Charlotte Fischer: Framing Big Data: A Discourse Analysis of the Media Frames of Aggregate Mobile Phone Data in Germany (2015, May). ICA Annual Conference, San Juan, U.S.A. (full paper; Political Communication section)

with Claudia Fraas; Stefan Meier & Vivien Sommer: Frames in the Convergent Multimodal Discourse on the John/Ivan Demjanjuk Trial: Methodical Framework and Analytical Process (2015, May). ICA Annual Conference, San Juan, U.S.A. (full paper; Mass Communication section)

with Claudia Fraas: Verbale und visuelle Medienframes im Verfahrensrahmen der Grounded Theory analysieren: Methodologische Grundlagen und Forschungspraxis deduktiven und induktiven Kodierens von multimodalen Dokumenten (2015, March). Conference "Auswertung qualitativer Daten", Munich, Germany

with Claudia Fraas: The Social Construction of Big Data. A Study on the Framing of Aggregate Mobile Phone Data in Germany (2014, November). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Lisbon, Portugal

with Christine Lohmeier: Platform Memory and Social Forgetting in Wikipedia (2014, November). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Lisbon, Portugal

with Christine Lohmeier: Doing Mediated Memories Memory Work and the Practices of Cuban-American Remembrance (2014, May). ICA Annual Conference, Seattle, U.S.A. (full paper; Philosophy, Theory and Critique section)

with Claudia Fraas: Framing big data: Methode und Ergebnisse einer multimodalen, transmedialen Diskursanalyse der Handygate-Affäre 2011 (2014, May). DGPuK Annual Conference, Passau, Germany

‚What are these researchers doing in my Wikipedia?’: Forschungsethische Axiome und forschungspraktische Kompromisse teilnehmenden Beobachtens in digital vernetzten Umgebungen (2013, November). Conference of the DGPuK Section "Computervermittelte Kommunikation" (CvK), Vienna, Austria

with Claudia Fraas: Konzept und Methodologie einer transmedialen multimodalen Online-Diskursanalyse (2013, September). Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Angewandte Linguistik (GAL), Aachen, Germany

with Vivien Sommer & Claudia Fraas: Discourse practices and patterns online. Methodological foundations and implications (2013, August). ESA Annual Conference, Torino, Italy

The Structures and Practices of Multimodal Online Discourse (2013, June). ICA Annual Conference, London, U.K. (panel presentation; Visual Communication section)

with Claudia Fraas: Online-Diskurse als transmediale Diskurspraktiken und Diskursmuster. Konzept und methodologische Schlüsse (2013, February). Conference of the DGPuK Section "Mediensprache und Mediendiskurse", Trier, Germany

Doing the Media. Media, Affordances and Social Practices (2012, October). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Istanbul, Turkey

What makes online practices work? Digitally networked actions through the lens of practice theory (2012, October). Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Annual Conference, Salford, U.K.

What would a Wikipedian do? Self-organizing volunteers, cooperation-by-design, and the 'free encyclopedia that anyone can edit' (2012, July). Symposium "Co-production of Knowledge: Social media, STS and …?", York, U.K. (full paper)

Digital Devices and Governance through Qualifications: The Example of Wikipedia. (2011, November). Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meeting, Cleveland, U.S.A.

with Claudia Fraas; Stefan Meier; Olga Galanova & Vivien Sommer: Analyzing Frames in Multimodal Online Discourse (2011, August). AILA 2011 (16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics). Beijing, China

with Claudia Fraas; Stefan Meier; Olga Galanova & Vivien Sommer: Online-discourse as communicative practice and methodological concept for analyzing the interactions on the internet (2011, August). AILA 2011 (16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics). Beijing, China

with Claudia Fraas: Frames as adaptive networks of meaning: A frame-semantic model for communication research (2010, May). ICA, Boston, U.S.A. (full paper; Mass Communication section)

A pragmatist-semiotic model of interpretation (2011, May). ICA pre-conference "Post-Rorty Pragmatism: The New Wave of Pragmatism in Communication Research", Boston, U.S.A.

with Stefan Meier: Multimodal online communication through the lense of practice theory (2011, March). Georgetown Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT), Washington D.C., U.S.A.

Medienentwicklung praktisch. Eine praxeologische Perspektive auf Medienentwicklungen (2010, October). Annual Conference DGPuK Section "Soziologie der Medienkommunikation", Hanover, Germany

Governance der Gemeinschaft durch die Gemeinschaft. Wikipedia-Autoren als Community und ihre Steuerung als 'Community' (2011, October). Annual Conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, Frankfurt a.M., Germany

Markets, hierarchies or peers? Scrutinizing peer produced governance of net-based collective action (2011, October). ECREA Bi-Annual Conference, Hamburg, Germany

Gemeingut-Regime. Wie die Wikipedia ihre Inhalte schützt (2011, September). Critical Point of View Conference, Leipzig, Germany

Online cooperation as commons-based peer production. Social dilemmas and institutions (2009, November). Joint Conference ECREA Section "Digital Culture & Communication", DGPuK Sections "Computervermittelte Kommunikation" (CvK) and "Soziologie der Medienkommunikation", Berlin, Germany

Many Voices, One Account? The Dynamics of Co-Creation in Wikipedia (2009, September). 5th European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference, Potsdam, Germany (full paper)

with Max Loubser: Rule Dynamics and Rule Effects in the Commons-based Peer Production (2009, September). 5th European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference, Potsdam, Germany (full paper)

Wikipedia als Gemeinschaft. Eine explorative Studie zur Vergemeinschaftung in der Online-Enzyklopädie (2009, May). DGPuK Annual Conference, Bremen, Germany

with Claudia Fraas & Stefan Meier: Ausdifferenzierung und Konvergenz von Kommunikationsformen an den Schnittstellen der online-offline-Kommunikation. Ein methodischer Zugang (2009, February). Joint Conference of the DGPuK Section "Mediensprache und Mediendiskurse" and the GAL Section "Medienkommunikation", Gießen, Germany

with Stefan Meier: ‚Basis' meets Web 2.0. Praktiken subpolitischer Kommunikation im ‚neuen Netz' und deren Erhebung (2008, November). Conference of the DGPuK Section "Computervermittelte Kommunikation" (CvK), Ilmenau, Germany

Frames, Institutions, and Software Architectures in Projects of Commons-Based Peer Production (2008, October). Doctoral Colloquium, Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Annual Conference 2008, Copenhagen, Denmark

Bilingual comparison of argumentation patterns in the knowledge construction discourses in Wikipedia (2008, August). AILA 2008 (15th World Congress of Applied Linguistics), Essen, Germany

Governing a Community. The Formation of Leadership and Governance in a Web 2.0 Project (2008, July). Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Stockholm, Sweden (full paper)

Building an Online Community. The Case Wikipedia (2008, March). General Online Research 2008, Hamburg, Germany

with Claudia Fraas: Frame- und Argumentationsanalyse als integrativer Zugang zu diskursiven Bedeutungs-Aushandlungsprozessen (2008, March). Joint Conference of the DGPuK Section "Mediensprache und Mediendiskurse" and the GAL Section "Medienkommunikation", Trier, Germany

Was macht die Macht im neuen Netz? (2009, September). Workshop "Das neue Netz? Bestandsaufnahme und Perspektiven", Bamberg, Germany

Fixing the Floating Gap. The Online Encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a Global Memory Place (2007, June). Workshop "Collective Memory and Collective Knowledge in a Global Age", London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE), The Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London, UK

Foucault@Wikipedia. Diskursive Wissensgenerierung in Wikis am Beispiel der Online Enzyklopädie Wikipedia (2006, September). Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für angewandte Linguistik (GAL), Münster, Germany

with Sebastian Seidenglanz: Foucault@Wiki. First Steps Towards a Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of Wiki Discourses (2006, August). WikiSym, Odense, Denmark (full paper)

Invited Talks

with Charlotte Knorr (2024, February). Making Sense of “Big Data”: Ten Years of Discourse Around Datafication in Germany, South Africa, and the U.S. Higher Seminar in Media and Communication Studies, Södertörn University.

Wissenschaftskommunikation (2023, November). Sächsisches Transferforum 2023, Leipzig.

DigiBeL – Perspektiven und Einsatzmöglichkeiten digitaler Beteiligungsverfahren in der ländlichen Regionalentwicklung (2023, November). Netzwerktreffen Bürgerbeteiligung, Dresden.

Night Shifts: Appified Time, Sleep Data, and the Blurring Boundaries of Smart Phone (Non-)Use (2023, November). Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Virtually alive. The spectacle of AI resurrection in a post-mortem society (2023, November). Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Media Memory Work and Wikipedia (2023, June). Keynote at wikihistories 2023, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Als Big Data groß war (2023, July). Keynote „Kommunikationsforschung an der TU Dresden: Past | Presence | Future“, Dresden.

Creating co-creation. Reflections on participation and storytelling around the smart home (2023, March). Arqus Research Seminar, Leipzig, Germany

with Veronika Stein (2023, January). Zukunft ländlicher Regionen: digital vernetzt & partizipativ? Forschungskolloquium Lokale digitale Partizipation, TU Dresden, Germany.

Algorithmen und soziale Plattformen (2022, Dezember). Seniorenkolleg, Leipzig University, Germany.

Total vernetzt - total kontrolliert? Wie Algorithmen in unser Leben eingreifen (2022, November). Volkshochschule Chemnitz, Germany.

with Jakob Jünger & Erik Koenen: ICA Presidential Addresses (2022, September). History of Media Studies working group (Virtual).

Medien als Lebensmitte(l) (2022, September). Lutherkirchgemeinde Plauen, Germany.

Arbeits-, Begutachtungs- und Entscheidungsprozesse bei der Publizistik (2022, September). Kommunikations- und medienwissenschaftliche Nachwuchstage, Salzburg, Austria.

Karrierewege nach der Promotion an deutschen Universitäten (2022, September). Kommunikations- und medienwissenschaftliche Nachwuchstage, Salzburg, Austria.

with Andreas Bischof: Instant Teaming as Plans and Situated Actions (2022, May). Instant Teaming Colloquium, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany.

Praktiken netzbasierten Zusammenarbeitens: Rückblick auf eine praxiographische Studie der Gemeingüterproduktion (2022, February). Workshop Methodenvielfalt in der praxistheoretischen Kommunikationsforschung: Von (digitaler) Ethnographie bis Netzwerkforschung, DGPuK Annual Meeting, FU Berlin, Germany.

Night Shifts: Appified Time, Sleep Data, and the Blurring Boundaries of Smart Phone (Non-)Use (2022, November). Faculty Seminar Series, Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University at Jerusalem, Israel.

Erinnern in digitalen Medien: Zwischen Retrospektion und Projektion (2021, November). Deutsches Historisches Institut / German Historical Institute, Warsaw, Poland.

Making the Future Visible: Infographics in Predictive Data Journalism (2021, September). Keynote Internationaler Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Semiotik, Chemnitz, Germany (gone virtual).

Wie steht es um die Digitalisierung von Beteiligungsverfahren im ländlichen Raum? (2021, September). Netzwerk Stadt-Land Sachsen-Anhalt, Sommerakademie, Gut Mößlitz, Germany

Mediale Erinnerungsarbeit zwischen Retrospektion und Projektion (2019, February). Keynote Winter School Social Semiotics, Passau, Germany.

with Denise Fechner: Die Imagination der Zukunft im Datenjournalismus (2018, October). ZeMKI Forschungskolloquium, Bremen University.

with Lena Fölsche: Die öffentliche Verhandlung von Big Data in politischen Kampagnen (2018, October). ABIDA-Projektverbund. Gutachtertagung. Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Berlin.

with Lena Fölsche: Die öffentliche Verhandlung von Big Data in politischen Kampagnen (2018, September). ABIDA-Projektverbund. Fokusgruppentreffen, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin.

Was sind Medienkulturen heute? Lektionen der alltäglichen digitalen Revolution (2018, June). 46. CHALLENGE Workshop, Radio Bremen & Hochschule Bremen.

Telling and Taming Anticipatory Visions in Data Journalism (2018, March). Faculty Seminar Series, Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University at Jerusalem, Israel.

Ethical Premises and Practical Judgment in Internet-Based Ethnography (2017, September). Workshop „Interpreting Social Activites Online“, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

Das Interaktive Museum von Morgen (2017, April). Dresden State Art Collections, Dresden, Germany

with Peter Gentzel: Theoretische Herausforderungen der Digitalisierung historischer Kommunikationsforschung (2017, January). Workshop "Kommunikationsgeschichte digitalisieren: Historische Kommunikationsforschung im digitalen Zeitalter", Leipzig, Germany

Digitale Plattformen und Öffentlichkeiten. Sachstand, Herausforderungen und Potentiale (2016, September). Seminar für Kommunikationsbeamte im Freistaat Thüringen, Landesfortbildungsstätte, Tambach-Dietharz, Germany

Organized witnessing and archival monitoring in collaborative knowledge production. The case of Wikipedia (2016, September). 8th German-Israeli Frontiers of Humanities Symposium (GISFOH), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) and Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (IASH), Potsdam, Germany

‘I’m not looking for work. The work finds me’: Editorial routines, task routing and machinepower in Wikipedia (2015, November). Workshop "Mundane Memories. Practices and representations of remembering in everyday life." King's College London, London, U.K.

Framing Big Data. Methode und Ergebnisse einer multimodalen, transmedialen Diskursanalyse der Handygate-Affäre 2011 (2015, October). Invited talk, Institute for Media, Knowledge and Communication, Augsburg University, Germany

Wikipedia told me so: Was kann studentische Medien- und Bildungspraxis von freier Wissensproduktion lernen? (2015, October). Invited Lecture, Conference "Verflechtungen II: Medien, Bildung und Wissen in der Hochschule", TU Braunschweig, Brunswick, Germany

How does commons-based peer production work (when it works)? Practices and institutions of net-enabled collaboration: The case of Wikipedia (2015, May). Guest Lecture. Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King's College London, London, U.K.

Internet Governance (2015, March). Guest Lecture, Analysing the Cultural and Creative Industries. Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King's College London, London, U.K.

Medienvermittelte Praktiken in der Gemeingüterproduktion (2015, January). Guest lecture, Department of Journalism and Communication Research, Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien, Hanover, Germany

Wie funktioniert Wikipedia (wenn sie funktioniert)?: Aktivierung, Aggregation und Entscheidungen in online-medialem, kollektivem Handeln (2014, January). Guest lecture, Research Cluster "Internetvermittelte kooperative Normsetzung", Düsseldorf University, Germany

with Malte Ziewitz: Tools of the trade. Mechanizing understanding, big data and a slow science (2013, October). Featured Keynote Session at the World Social Science Forum, Montreal, Canada

Wikipedia. Expertengespräch zum Medienlager für Nachwuchsjournalisten (2013, July). SPIESSER Dresden, Chemnitz, Germany

with Claudia Fraas: Multimodale Frames analysieren. Werkstattbericht eines qualitativen Mixed-Method-Ansatzes (2013, February). Workshop "Frame-Theorien im Vergleich: Modelle, Anwendungsfelder, Methoden", Düsseldorf University, Germany

Coding regulation in Wikipedia (2013, January). Workshop "Submit: Code as Control", Hans-Bredow Institute, Hamburg, Germany

Chancen und Risiken sozialer Medien für die Berufsberatung (2012, December). Fortbildung der Berufsberaterinnen und -berater, Agentur für Arbeit Chemnitz, Meißen, Germany

with Aleksander Dera: Hochschul-PR im Mitmachnetz. Kommunizieren in Wikipedia (2012, September). Jahrestagung des Bundesverbandes Hochschulkommunikation, Dresden, Germany

Social Media/Social Memory. Remembering in a Networked Age (2012, July). Oxford Internet Institute Alumni Conference, University of Oxford, U.K.

Too many things to remember. Commemoration online, memory places, and the economies of attention (2012, July). Digital Memories Seminar, University of London/London South Bank University, Center for Media & Culture Research, London, U.K.

Potenziale sozialer Medien für die Studienorientierung (2012, July). Berufsakademien Sachsen, Dresden, Germany

Potenziale sozialer Medien für die Studienorientierung (2012, May). Fortbildung der Beraterinnen und Berater für akademische Berufe, Agenturen für Arbeit Sachsen, Meißen, Germany

Editieren ist Silber, Diskutieren ist Gold? Wikipedia als Diskussionsraum und Informationsplattform im neuen Netz (2012, May). Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache, Zweigverein Greifswald, Germany

Online-mediale Texte. Kommunikationsformen, Affordanzen, Interfaces (2012, February). Colloquium, de Gruyter Publishers, Berlin, Germany

Panel speaker at the Demokratie-Kongress 2011, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Berlin Adlershof, Germany, 30 November 2011

Wer, wie, was Wikipedia? Studien und Forschungsergebnisse zur Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia (2011, September). Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Berlin, Germany

Medienpraktiken – Medienmodi. Medienhandeln aus praxistheoretischer Sicht (2011, June). Hans-Bredow-Institut/Graduate School Media and Communication, Hamburg, Germany

Panel speaker at the 1st Conference of the CDU-Landesausschuss Wirtschaft und Innovation "Kluge Köpfe: Die Besten in und für Sachsen", Altkötzschenbroda, Germany, 12 April 2011

Virtual Communities. Being Alone Together (2010, September). Workshop "The Digital Revolution and the Atomization of the Human Experience", Consorci Universitat Internacional Menéndez Pelayo de Barcelona (CUIMPB), Centre Ernest Lluch, Barcelona, Spain

Was haben Viehweiden mit Software zu tun? Informationsgüter und die Allmende (2010, May). UNIX-Stammtisch, TU Chemnitz, Germany

Soziale Dilemmata online (2009, December). Doktorandenforum der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Koppelsberg, Germany

Governing Wikipedia. The Dynamics of Rules-in-form and Rules-in-use in the Online Encyclopaedia (2009, October). Berkman Centre for Society & Internet, Harvard Law School, U.S.A.

Cooperative Text Production in Wikipedia (2009, March). Collaborative Digital Research in the Humanities (CEDAR) Workshop, Aberystwyth University, Wales, U.K.

Coordinating collective action in projects of the commons-based peer production (2009, March). Information and Web Science Doctoral Workshop, Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford, U.K.

Applying the institutional analysis and development framework to the commons-based peer production. A workshop report (2009, March). DPhil Seminar, Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford, U.K.

Marktplatz der Ideen. Zur Analyse der diskursiven Wissenskonstruktion in Wikipedia (2008, November). Workshop "Kollaborative Wissenskonstruktion mit Wikis", Leibniz Graduate School for Knowledge Media Research, Institut für Wissensmedien, Tübingen, Germany

Commentary to the talk of Dietrich Busse "Linguistische Konzepte zur Diskursanalyse" (2008, October). Workshop of the DFG network "Methodologien und Methoden der Diskursanalyse" (MeMeDA), Wuppertal, Germany

Regulation and Governance in the Commons-based Peer Production (2008, July). Summer Doctoral Programme (SDP), Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford, U.K.

Wikipedia. Die (andere) Enzyklopädie. Gedruckte Nachschlagewerke und das freie Online-Lexikon Wikipedia zwischen Konkurrenz und Kontinuität (2008, May). Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS), Zweigverein Chemnitz, Germany

Online-Diskurse. Theoretische und methodische Anforderungen eines diskursanalytischen Untersuchungsfeldes (2008, April). Doktorandenforum der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Kloster Schönenberg, Ellwangen, Germany

Diskursive Regime in einer heterarchisch organisierten Online-Umgebung (2007, December). Doktorandenforum der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Kloster St. Norbert, Rot an der Rot, Germany

'Make truth laugh': irony and laughter in the novels of Eco (2007, October). Conference "Le rire européen / European Laughter. Exchanges and Confrontations." Université de Perpignan, France

Discursive Knowledge Constitution in Wikipedia (2007, May). Willy-Brandt-Center, Wrocław University, Poland