Team

Anne Bartsch is Professor of Empirical Communication and Media Research with a focus on methodology and methods at the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig. Previously, she was Professor of Communication Science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and taught at the University of Augsburg, Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen and Martin-Luther-University Halle.

Anne Bartsch is a member of the International Communication Association (ICA), the German Society for Journalism and Communication Science (DGPuK), and the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI). She is a member of the editorial board of the journals Human Communication Research, Media Psychology, Projections and Journal of Media Psychology. She has conducted various research projects on media use and media effects, which were funded by the German Research Foundation and the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance, among others.

She is currently leading two DFG projects on political mediation at the interface of entertainment and information and on the influence of formal characteristics of audiovisual narratives on the empathetic reaction and prosocial behavior of recipients.

Main research topics

• Method development (survey, experiment, online research)
• Media reception and effects research
• Entertainment research
• Political communication
• Risk and health communication

Sonja Ganguin is Professor of Media Literacy and Appropriation Research at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies and Director of the Center for Media and Communication (ZMK) at the University of Leipzig. Ganguin taught at the University of Bielefeld at the Faculty of Education, worked at the FernUniversität Hagen and at the University of Paderborn at the Institute for Media Studies in the fields of media education and empirical media research.

Ganguin is a member of the International Communication Association (ICA), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft (DGPuK), the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft (DGfE), the Zentrums für Kindheits- und Jugendforschung (ZKF) and a member of the Gesellschaft für Medienpädagogik und Kommunikationskultur (GMK). Ganguin is also a member of the board of directors of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kinder- und Jugendschutz (AJS), jury member of the Medienkompetenzpreis Mitteldeutschland and the Deutscher Computerspielpreis (DCP), examiner of the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Fernsehen (FSF) and advisory board member of Digitale Bildung trifft Schule (DigiBitS).

Main research topics

• Media Literacy and media criticism
• Digital games and serious games
• E-Learning and mobile learning
• Youth media protection

Christian Pieter Hoffmann is Professor of Communication Management at the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig. In addition, he is responsible for teaching political communication in cooperation with the Institute for Political Science. Hoffmann is a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen and the Zurich School of Economics, he has also taught at the Singapore Management University and the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Hoffmann is academic director of the Center for Research in Financial Communication.

Christian Pieter Hoffmann is a member of the International Communication Association (ICA), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft (DGPuK), the Academy of Management (AOM), Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) as well as a member of the Advisory Board of the German Investor Relations Association and the Center for Corporate Reporting, Switzerland. He conducted numerous research projects on aspects of digital participation in cooperation with the Deutschen Institut für Vertrauen und Sicherheit im Internet (DIVSI) and the Nationalen E-Government Kompetenzzentrum (NEGZ). Currently, he is leading an EU Horizon 2020 project on participation in the Sharing Economy.

Main research topics

• Trust and privacy on the Internet
• Political participation on the net
• Digital divide and digital literacy
• Economic participation on the net, digital work and sharing economy

Christian Pentzold is a Professor of Media and Communication in the Department for Communication and Medias Studies at the University of Leipzig. Before that, he worked in the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen and at Chemnitz University of Technology. He is broadly interested in the construction and appropriation of digital media and the roles information and communication technologies play in modern society. Hiw work in communication research and media analysis links to insights coming from cultural sociology, linguistics plus science and technology studies. In current projects, he looks at the public understanding of big data, humans interacting with robots, the organization and governance of peer production, mediated participation in rural regions, as well as the interplay of time, data, and media. Beyond that, he is interested in applying theories of practice to the study of media and communication and in linking qualitative approaches with digital methods. From 2012 to 2016 he was an Associate Researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society, Berlin and in 2015 he joined the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s College London as a Post-Doc Research Fellow. In spring 2018, he was a Humboldt Fellow at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

Main research topics

• Internet-based communication and cooperation
• Digital media technologies
• Public discourse and data retrieval
• Human-Robot-Communication
• Qualitative and computer-aided methods of media analysis and communication research
• Media practice and everyday culture
• Media memory and time regimes

Sven Stollfuß is a junior professor for Digital Media Culture at the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig. He researched and taught at the universities of Marburg, Mannheim and Bayreuth and was a guest lecturer at universities in Turkey and France.

Stollfuß is a member of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS), the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft (GfM) and its working groups "Data and Networks" and "Participation and Fan Research". He is concerned with the forms and further development of social TV applications and a participatory production culture on the Internet against the background of different forms of possibilities for digital participation.

Main research topics

• Digital participatory forms of production
• Prosumer research and digital media
• Social television
• Social media and participatory media culture

Ulf Merkel has been a research associate at the Chair of Communication Management at the University of Leipzig since October 2018. He works in the fields of online communication and crisis communication. As a PhD candidate he conducts research on the topic of digital participation.

Main research topics

• Participation in Internet
• Online Communication
• Social Media
• Online Dating

Since October 2020, Veronika Stein has been a research assistant at the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig in the project "Perspectives and Applications of Digital Participation Processes in Rural Regional Development" funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). Prior to this, she studied political science with a focus on sociology at the University of Erfurt. During her studies, she worked as a research assistant at the Chair for Structural Analysis of Modern Societies at the University of Erfurt and as a research assistant at the German Center for Higher Education and Science Research (DZHW) in Hanover, where her research interests included equal opportunities and digitization in the university landscape.

Main research topics

• Social inequality
• Social transformation processes and social diagnoses
• Social space and cultural practices

Christina Rueß has been researching as a research associate at the Chair of Communication Management at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies since November 2017. She is currently working on the topic of risk and crisis communication. Her research interests also include political communication, social media, participation and credibility in the online sector.

Main research topics

• Participation in Internet
• Political Communication
• Crisis Communication
• Credibility in Internet
• Online Communication
• Social Media

Katharina Heger has been a research associate at the Chair of Communication Management since January 2019. Her research focuses on political inequality in participation and representation and political communication. At the Chair of Communication Management, she conducts research on political participation on the Internet and on digital discourse culture.

At the same time, she has been working as a research associate in a research project at the institute of political science since November 2018, in which she focuses on the development of elites in Germany and the political representation of women and minorities.

Main research topics

• Political participation in the Internet
• Political communication
• Participation and representation
• Gender studies
• Political attitudes

Benedikt Haupt joined the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig in June 2021 as a research associate. After his studies of Media Communication (B.A.) and Digital Media and Communication Cultures (M.A.) at the Technical University of Chemnitz, he received a scholarship there in the SFB 1410 of Hybrid Societies. In addition to his studies, he was a student assistant in the project Miteinander at the TU Chemnitz and later a research assistant at the Chair of Visual Communication and Media Sociology.
At the University of Leipzig he is now working in the project futurehomestories.

Main research topics

• Human-robot-interactions
• Visual communication
• Co-creation

Alexa Becker has been a research associate at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig since June 2021. She has an interdisciplinary background in literature, art, media, and computer science. Her research interests are microinteractions, co-design, and the smart home, especially for people with chronic diseases. She works in the project "futurehomestories" funded by the BMBF.

Main research topics

• Co-design
• Smart home
• Microinteractions

Daniel Seibert is a research assistant at the Chair of Empirical Communication and Media Research II at the University of Leipzig. He studied Communication and Media Studies with a focus on Empirical Research at the University of Leipzig (M.A.) and Sociology and Communication and Media Studies at the University of Rostock (B.A.). After completing his master's degree in 2020, he worked as a research assistant and research associate in various research projects. Since April 2022, Daniel has been the coordinator of the SAB-funded project "Audiovisual media content based on artificial intelligence: analyzing the challenges and potentials of deepfakes in the network of science, business and society". In his dissertation project, he investigates the impact of deepfakes on audience perception of online media content and also addresses future positive application areas of deepfake technologies.

Main research topics

• Technology assessment (deepfakes, ICT, smart city)
• Media reception and impact research
• Science communication
• Internal communication