Category: Review

Following its initial boom, augmented reality passed through its trough on the Gartner Hype Cycle in 2018. After the Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine became the first magazine in the world to include additional virtual content in its printed product in 2010, the technology became familiar to the majority of the population through the smartphone game Pokémon GO. Augmented reality is also becoming increasingly important in industry. continue to article

The choice of topic for monographic doctoral projects is a topic in itself. As a book project needs to develop over a period of several years, it should not depend on short-term trends and ›fashion‹ topics. At the same time, the development of attention cycles in society and science can only be predicted to a limited degree. An issue may be considered highly relevant during the planning phase of a project spanning several years, only to have fallen out of focus by the time the work is published. On the other hand, a topic area may also gather pace over the course of the dissertation, without this being obvious from the beginning. continue to article

Divided into theory and practice of TV and AV journalism, Andreas Elter’s two-volume work promises to cover the entire spectrum of digital AV journalism. The first volume, which looks at the theory and includes only a few comments on practice in separate, framed paragraphs, has now been published. continue to article

It has become common today for critical journalists to question whether, in order to maintain its own credibility, the media should campaign for greater diversity in the production of news, film and television. As well as a diverse range of people in editorial offices and production teams, it is important to ensure a gender balance between the men and women shown on television and cinema screens. Forty-four years ago, Küchenhoff et al. found gender hierarchization in German television schedules that put women at a considerable disadvantage. continue to article

Stephan Russ-Mohl greets the reader on the inside of the cover with a broad smile. But the book is far from cheerful. What he describes on the next 300 pages of Die informierte Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde leaves the reader feeling both alarmed and ultimately helpless.

Today, we still find ourselves in the opening stages of digital development. Reflecting on and discussing how children and adolescents grow up with it, in it, and creating it, presents numerous dimensions and aspects – some of which actually do justice to this radical and much cited transformation. There are undoubtedly normative decisions to be made and education questions to resolve – but this needs to be done in as up-to-the-minute a way as possible, which is rarely the case in this book.

At the start of 2015, there was no way of knowing that the issue of refugees in the media and the relationship between the European community and the refugees would continue to shape political debate to this day. By the time the events of New Year’s Eve came around, society’s view and the media resonance had changed beyond all recognition – as is shown by the term »refugee crisis« and the way refugees and migration are framed as a security problem for European countries. This makes the issue ideal for research into political events and the dynamics of media and society.

What do users click on? How much time do they spend on an article? Do they watch a video all the way to the end? In the digital world, the use of content can be analyzed with a great deal of precision – a process that has become known as ›analytics.‹ Journalists themselves also use data, learning ever more about how many people access their page, how often which articles are read, and how intensively users interact with a post on Facebook. For more than a decade now, journalism research has also focused intensively on how journalists use these new possibilities and how they are changing journalism.

Will the journalists of the future have to be programmers and businesspeople, too? Should we focus on supporting learners’ creativity and developing their personalities? How much teaching time should a lecturer spend on research techniques or writing style? These are the questions currently being considered by many involved in journalist training. Whether the learners are students at university, trainees in editorial offices, or undertaking further training online, they expect to be taught everything they need to know for a career in journalism. What do they want to learn? What should we be teaching them? We need to make a selection from all the skills and abilities we would like to get across.

Media literacy is the topic on everyone’s lips. Claims that journalism has descended into a lying press, elections are manipulated by fake news, and smartphone use by children and young people is out of control, have all led to a sense that there is a lack of media literacy, and that this deficit is a danger to society, democracy, and the personal wellbeing of young people.