2023-10-16 15:19:59
If you asked me 20 years ago what I wanted to do later in life, I would answer: “Something with media.” That worked, somehow. Today I am a media researcher and work with like-minded people who also do something with media. This sounds like a nerd’s version of a childhood dream – less hipster than founding a start-up and less cool than running an investigative blog, but still exciting and relevant.
Because what is more important in our society than media and communication? Whether in business or politics, whether online or offline. Everything we do, how we think about the world and communicate in it, has to do with media – from the news in the “Tagesschau” to the algorithms of WhatsApp daycare groups to violence in video games. For science nerds like me, these are research projects that keep you up at night.
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I’m currently at a conference in Philadelphia, on the east coast of the USA. There I meet with around 150 other science nerds at the Union for Democratic Communication (UDC) conference. We discuss the latest trends and pitfalls of the media world. At the forefront: the power of global digital corporations, media concentration in Europe and the death of media in the USA. Hovering over everything are the current events in Israel and Palestine, their one-sided reporting in the USA and Europe and the difficulty of discussing and criticizing them publicly.
At the UDC I am presenting my research on the market expansion of major West German publishers in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. How and why did publishers like Axel Springer, Gruner & Jahr and the WAZ Group become quasi-monopolies in Hungary, Poland or Bulgaria? What impact did this have on the development of media and democracy there? These are important questions. If you see the current shift to the right in Hungary and Poland, these questions could have been asked earlier. Perhaps that is one reason why the topic is generating great interest, including in the USA. Because no one can pretend that extremism, populism and oppression in other countries are none of their business.
In the end, the activists are the bad guys – then and now
The scientists who founded the UDC 40 years ago knew this. They were fed up with ivory towers and information bubbles. They wanted to make things happen, work with activists and change politics. Those were good goals. Today they look back. The world is different, but the problems remain: Back then the news was full of the Cold War, today it’s China, Russia and Ukraine. Back then, Greenpeace fought against whaling with inflatable boats, today the last generation is stuck on Berlin’s streets. In the end, the activists are the bad guys – then and now. And thousands of people continue to die in Israel and Palestine. The news about the atrocities follows official policy and too often remains too one-sided in fear of repression.
But what can you say when everything has already been said and the killing still continues? Apparently little to nothing. Nevertheless, history shows that fear should not be deeper than outrage at human suffering – no matter whose suffering in which country. And no one can pretend that it doesn’t concern them – then and now.
#world #problems #remain