Hamburg, 20 September 2024. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) continues to fund the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC) with its eleven locations. The Hamburg RISC section at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut is analyzing the interplay between media and social change in several projects.
A scientific committee convened by the BMBF has reviewed the application for continuation and recommended that the RISC should continue to be funded. Subject to a successful interim evaluation, the Institute will now be funded by the BMBF until 2029. In the new funding phase, the RISC will focus its research and knowledge transfer on the current interrelations between social cohesion and social transformation processes. The BMBF is offering the RISC the prospect of up to ten million euros in annual funding to gain new insights into social cohesion in the face of the climate crisis, transnational processes of coupling and decoupling, war and migration.
Projects at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI)
In the new funding phase, the Hamburg RISC section will address the transformative power of interlocking media and social change in several key areas, thus following on from the projects of the first funding phase from 2020-2024. The overarching question of the Hamburg RISC section is what role media and communication play in creating or threatening social cohesion.
PD Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt, head of the Hamburg RISC section: “The changes in the media landscape make it easier to form opinions and participate in socially relevant decisions. At the same time, however, disinformation, hate speech and populist exaggeration are on the rise. New platforms and pioneering communities are emerging alongside established journalistic organizations, experimenting with formats that organize social discourse differently. At the Hamburg RISC section, we combine empirical analyses and theoretical-conceptual work to explore these changes in the social communication order and their consequences for cohesion.
The infrastructure of the “Social Media Observatory” (SMO) which was established at the Hamburg section of the RISC during the first funding phase will be expanded in the coming years. The SMO enables the systematic and continuous observation of the public sphere in journalistic and social media. To this end, it provides a monitoring and data infrastructure with which debates in social media can be recorded, analyzed and visualized.
The BMBF’s decision to continue funding is a great sign of confidence in our work. Over the past four years, we have succeeded in bringing together the expertise of almost 200 researchers at eleven locations under one roof,” says Prof. Dr. Olaf Groh-Samberg, managing spokesperson of the RISC. “This has resulted in numerous important publications and thought-provoking ideas on cohesion research. In addition, we have succeeded in building a unique data infrastructure that will provide important insights into social cohesion in Germany and Europe in the future. And last but not least, we have established innovative formats of science communication, including a wide range of knowledge offerings for civil society and politics, but also dialogical transfer projects, through which we have been able to incorporate insights from the everyday world of our partners in practice into our own research”.
More about the work of the HBI
About the RISC
The Research Institute Social Cohesion was established by the BMBF in 2020 as an interdisciplinary and decentralized institute. It combines the expertise of around 200 researchers at eleven locations in Germany. The aim is to advance basic research on issues of social cohesion and to enrich public discourse through innovative knowledge transfer. During its first funding phase, the RISC has already built up a unique data infrastructure which provides important insights into social cohesion in Germany and Europe. In addition to the HBI in Hamburg, the members of the network include the Technical University of Berlin, the Universities of Bielefeld, Bremen, Frankfurt, Halle-Wittenberg, Hanover, Constance and Leipzig as well as the Sociological Research Institute Göttingen and the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society Jena.
In the second funding phase, the institute as a whole will focus on four major topics:
- Political institutions and processes: Analysis of the relationship between political institutions and processes and social cohesion, with a particular focus on the challenges posed by political radicalization and polarization.
- Economic and social inequalities: Investigation of the effects of inequalities on social cohesion, particularly with regard to the legitimacy of the status and distribution order as well as political and cultural conflicts.
- Public goods and infrastructures: Research into the resilience and adaptability of public goods and infrastructures in the face of global challenges such as the pandemic, digitalization and climate crisis.
- Cultural aspects and symbolic practices: Analysis of the narratives, practices and knowledge that contribute to inclusion or exclusion within society.
Contact
Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut
Dr. Wiebke Schoon
Science Communication
E-mail: w.schoon@leibniz-hbi.de
Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC)
Kristin Voigtländer
Head of Press and Public Relations
Tel. +49 341 97-37762
E-Mail: presse@fgz-risc.de
www.fgz-risc.de