Praxis Projects

Under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Corinna Lüthje, the master’s students in the Class of 2014 led a common research project concerning using various means in Dresden to communicate the regional, natural hazard that the Elbe floods can present. In August of 2002, Dresden’s Elbe rose to “record floods”. The damage to the Semperoper alone totaled 27 million euros. Residential areas were damaged as well. This flood was a cause for national mobilization in the recently reunited Federal Republic and brought with it solidarity with the Dresdeners. Moreover, it was part of a flood catastrophe that impacted all of Central Europe. However, the city center was barely cleaned up and the Semperoper renovated when in early 2006, the next flood came along, bringing massive damage along with it. In June of 2013, the extreme flood waters rose to a height that beyond all water levels measured up until that point. But this time, the damage remained manageable. The aftereffects of 2002 and 2006 had inscribed themselves in the collective, public memory. They were not isolated events, but rather the mental starting point of a regional geohazard.

Regional geohazards are extreme events, which can take place in a certain geographic region at any time and therefore present a permanent danger to the society in this region. The population is aware of the danger and, in spite of this, settles in the region. So that no catastrophe results from a natural event, it is important look ahead when planning, constructing buildings, starting a life. Awareness of the danger is necessary for adaption and mitigation. This awareness is generated through a trauma­tic key event, the natural catastrophe, and must be kept fresh in the memory. Media is ideal for this purpose. Media is not only a source of information for the consumers, but also an important platform for various interest groups to convey their messages, which are selected by the media producers using certain criteria and processed in media products according to certain routines.

Under the umbrella of a common framework project investigating how memory of the flood of 2002 and the perception of the hazard has developed, seven relatively independent, but also integrated and coordinated sub-projects were carried out by the students. The results were presented in a poster session at the end of Summer Semester 2015.

You can find the academic posters from all of the sub-projects of HAZEL here.

In October of 2014, the social movement “Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes” [Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West] or PEGIDA was prominent in Dresden. The Monday Demonstrations and “strolls” quickly gained a following. Up to 25,000 Menschen took part in the demonstrations. Offshoots of the movement formed across the entire country and even in other German-speaking places. Unlike Dresden, however, these activities had little success and mobilized strong resistance and counter demonstrations from the citizens. What was distinctive about PEGIDA in Dresden was strong criticism against the media, which manifested initially in refusal to communicate and the catchphrase: “Lügenpresse” [lying press].

Under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Corinna Lüthje, the master’s students conducted a qualitative discourse analysis in Summer 2015, in order to delve further into the question, which discourses, constructions, and meanings the phenomenon of PEGIDA experienced in the German-speaking press. In teams of two, the students examined two newspapers or magazines from Germany or other German-speaking areas. Using a wide selection of titles, the goal was to uncover the entire journalistic spectrum in order to research how diverse or even similar the media coverage of PEGIDA was.

The TU Dresden received nationwide recognition in June 2012 as a result of being named an University of Excellence. For this purpose, the research project is made up of a content analysis and survey, which was partly conceptualized as a further work on a poll conducted in 2011 by the Institute. While students and staff at the TU Dresden in both academic and nonacademic departments were polled about knowledge, information status, channels of information, and opinions about the initiative and excellence status of their university, the analysis of national and regional reporting pursued a national and comparative approach. It aimed at capturing the tenor of the media in terms of reporting all eleven excellent universities during the time before, during, and after the decision phase and analyzing how much of the total reporting about universities concerned the excellence initiative.

In January of 2013, 1.73 million viewers followed the program “Berlin – Tag & Nacht” [Berlin – Day and Night] (BTN) and BTN enjoyed a great following on Facebook as well. At that time (March 2013), 2.6 million fans “liked” the site. 198,713 people talked about it daily, meaning they commented on actors’ posts.

The goal of the research project was to find an academic reason for the immense success of this type of show and make assertions about the common themes in viewer consumption. As a first step, qualitative group discussions were used to ascertain fundamental attitudes of viewers, channels for consumption, and motifs in broadcast format. They were able to thereby also find aspects like the amount of involvement and emotional attachment from viewers. The results of the qualitative pilot study served moreover to generate relevant instruments for a quantitative survey.

The guiding question of the project investigating the broadcasting format of Berlin Tag & Nacht was: “Do Cross-Media strategies generate added value for the consumers and lead to a strengthening of parasocial interactions/relationships?”

Students investigated the structure and effects of economic reporting in the daily press comparing them on an international level. To that end, thematization and evaluation processes were surveyed in German, English, Irish, Austrian, and Italian daily papers using free text research in databanks. The media data was set in relationship with actual business development and the development of the economic climate in the population. Particular thematic focal points were placed on the magnitude of the portrayal and the effects of negativity in conjectural reporting, the portrayal of inflation and its effects, and the thematization and framing of the Euro Crisis.

As part of a comprehensive research project for students in the “Applied Media Research” program and under the direction of Dr. Döveling (LS III IfK), the Institute pursued the topic of online emotions with a special focus on sadness. They researched how emotions were shared or communicated, which effects this had on the individual, and to what extent communal relationships (Weber, 1922) and communitization-relevant processes are formed. The perceived belonging to a social, online group can lead to relief  from a burdensome emotion such as sadness in a similar way to coping (Lazarus, 1984).

Building upon already available explorative studies on the topic (Döveling, 2012), as well as on an extensive selection of literature and presentation of research, further hypotheses were generated through a qualitative content analysis, which was subsequently proofed in a quantitative study. With regard to the increasing meaning of the “Social Web,” the fact took into account that ‘private’ emotions were increasingly spreading into the online world. For that purpose, an expansion of the emotional spectrum was investigated through considering online interpersonal communication processes. The investigation period was divided into a qualitative study from April to June 2013 and a quantitative review of the results in August/September 2013. The stated aim of the study was to review the extent to which an emotion, as a result of sharing, leads to a form of coping, which factors are relevant in this process, and which role determining and intervening variables play.

Future-oriented technologies like nanotechnology play an ever-increasingly important role in our modern industrial and technical research and development. Yet these technologies offer not only chances for technical advancement, but also bring risks along with them. In the public debate about new, pioneering technologies is very important to the perception and acceptance of these technologies by the population. These are chiefly conveyed through the mass media, as direct opportunities to experience things are often absent. As part of a seminar, a study design was created, with which it could be communicated how media reports about academic-technical innovations and controversies and how these topics are perceived by the public. As part of this project, the seminar participants had access to data and survey instruments already put in place and tested by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The students thereby received the opportunity to lead international, empirical comparisons between German-speaking coverage and media in the United States.

The day-to-day usage of social networks goes inevitably along with giving away personal data. Whether it is photos from the last vacation Mallorca or posting a new relationship status or political views, users leave behind personal data on Facebook, Twitter, und other sites, which occasionally reveals a very detailed account of themselves. From an academic perspective, it is not only a question of the meaningful attraction of revealing private life; the students also sought also to investigate possible consequences in terms of forming an impression or developing certain ideas of roles. For that purpose, the research project aimed to analyze empirically the relationship the private sphere and revelations of self had in various forms of media.