Research Institute Social Cohesion

The Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC) has been researching issues of social cohesion from different perspectives since 2020. As part of RISC, the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) is investigating the role that media and communication play in creating or jeopardizing social cohesion.

To the website of RISC

Together, more than 100 scientists from many different disciplines are using empirical studies and large-scale comparisons to develop practical proposals that help to meet the social challenges of today. They cover aspects such as identities and regional experiences, inequalities and solidarity, media and conflict culture, polarization and populism, but also anti-Semitism and hate crime, and explore these in a European comparison and beyond.

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) selected eleven institutions from ten federal states in a science-led competition, which also allows the regional diversity of social cohesion in Germany to be examined. In addition to the HBI in Hamburg, 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 are part of the network, which will initially operate for four years from 2020 to 2024.

The Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut is involved in the following five projects in the research field of social cohesion at the RISC section in Hamburg:

1. 1. Media Use and Social Cohesion
   2. What Journalists Want and What They Ought to Do – The Transformation of the Journalism/Audience Relationship and Its Significance for Social Cohesion
   3. Integration-Related Remit and Functions of Public Service Media
   4. (Social) Media Observatory
   5. Transfer Office “Media and Social Cohesion”