Dr. Hans-Ulrich Wagner

Senior Researcher Media History

Hans-Ulrich Wagner has been working at the Research Centre Media History (previously: Research Center History of Broadcasting in Northern Germany) since December 2000 and has been its head since August 2005. His research interests include all areas of mediated public communication history. He focuses on historical research into media effects and the media-mediated culture of remembrance, the relationship between broadcasting and literature, sound studies and overarching issues relating to the history of media, programs and mentalities in the 20th century.

At Universität Hamburg he is responsible for teaching and examining in the subject area “Language, Literature, Media I”. Since 1996 he has been a member of the jury for the “Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden Preis für Radiokunst” [Blind War Veterans’ Prize for Radio Plays. Prize for Radio Arts]. He is a member of the board of the “Studienkreis Rundfunk und Geschichte” [Broadcasting and History] , serving as its first chairman from 2007 to 2011.

Hans-Ulrich Wagner studied German and theology at the universities of Bamberg and Münster and worked as a freelance literary critic and journalist. He received his doctorate in Bamberg in 1996 with a thesis on the radio play program of the immediate post-war period 1945-1949. He then worked as a research assistant at the German Broadcasting Archive in Frankfurt am Main, with a DFG project on Günter Eich’s broadcasting work and as curator of the exhibition “Remigranten und Rundfunk 1945-1955” [Remigrants and Broadcasting 1945-1955].

List of publications by Dr. Hans-Ulrich Wagner (not barrier-free PDF) (as of 2021)

Contact information

Dr. Hans-Ulrich Wagner

Senior Researcher Media History

Research Centre Media History
Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI)
Rothenbaumchaussee 36
20148 Hamburg
Germany

Last update: 04.07.2024

Works by Dr. Hans-Ulrich Wagner

Auf schwarz-weißem Schachbrett stehen sich weiße und schwarze Figuren gegenüber
Projekt DAAD cooperation project

Mapping Polarization in News Media Content

How are polarizing topics reported in Germany and Australia – and does this reporting contribute to the polarization of political attitudes? The project examines how news content in both countries differs in its coverage of controversial issues – and whether this reporting contains potentially polarizing elements.

Cover von Heft 1/2025 der Zeitschrift M&K
Publikation Available Open Access

Issue 1/2025 of M&K Published

Issue 1/2025 of our journal Media & Communication Studies (M&K) has been published, including articles on journalism in Germany in 2023, on the role of Google and YouTube in the dissemination of conspiracy theories, and on journalistic role expectations and ideals of social coexistence in the German population. All content can be downloaded for free from the Nomos eLibrary.

Cover des Nomos-Handbuchs Journalismusforschung
Publikation Recently Published

Journalism Research

A new Nomos Handbook, edited by Thomas Hanitzsch, Wiebke Loosen and Annika Sehl, offers an insight into the diversity of research on journalism in its social context. It looks, among other things, at actors, organisations and institutions, as well as at news, how it is produced and how it is used. The volume reflects the thematic, theoretical and methodological diversity of research.

Portrait Jan-Ole Harfst
Publikation Blog Post on Verfassungsblog

Elections in a Fortified Platform Democracy

The integrity of the German parliamentary elections and future European elections has been and continues to be threatened by influence peddling via social networks. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is supposed to provide a remedy against election manipulation. In a blog post on the Verfassungsblog, Jan-Ole Harfst explains why Art. 34-35 of the DSA could hardly remedy the systemic risks of this federal election campaign.

Deutschlandkarte auf dunklem Hintergrund
Beitrag RISC Blog Article

Elon Musk, the AfD and the Agenda-Setting of the Radical Right in the 2025 German Federal Election

The article explains how Elon Musk's communication interventions increase the media presence of Alice Weidel and the AfD, and how these dynamics are driven by the mechanisms of the digital attention economy.

Cover der Zeitschrift "Youth and Society" Ausg. 1/2025
Publikation Article in the Journal Youth & Society

Information and Political Engagement Practices of Disadvantaged Youth

In the study “Disinterested and Disillusioned? Information and Political Engagement Practices of Young People from Disadvantaged Backgrounds”, the information and participation practices of young people with a low level of formal education are examined.

Cover of Working Paper No. 75
Publikation Working Paper Available for Download

Labeling of Edited (Influencer) Photos: Necessity, Effect, Regulatory Approaches

Do digitally edited photos in social media have to be labeled? On behalf of the Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media (KJM), the HBI investigated the necessity of a legal labeling requirement for edited photos and videos. The expert opinion was presented to the public on 5 February 2025 and is available for download here as a working paper.

Illustration: ein oranger Roboter sitzt inmitten schwarzer Figuren, die Menschen darstellen
Projekt Project of the DFG Research Group ComAI

Communicative AI and Deliberative Quality

What impact do social bots that use Large Language Models (LLMs) have on the quality of political discourse? The project investigates communicative AI in the social domain of political discourse using discourse monitoring and discourse intervention and thus with a largely experimental approach. The case studies are debates in German on the topic of climate change on X, Mastodon and Bluesky.

Cover of the online article on “Mediendiskurs”
Publikation Article on the Platform mediendiskurs

About Constant Dripping and the Sum of Its Parts

The article by Stephan Dreyer and Sünje Andresen examines the challenges that arise for the regulatory framework of child and youth media protection as a result of “micro content” and the cross-platform media use of children and young people, and investigates whether and how regulation can do justice to these new realities.

Cover of a publication
Publikation Conversational Atmosphere Report

Information Ecosystems and Troubled Democracy

Do information ecosystems weaken democracy and promote the viral spread of mis- and disinformation? In the report “Information Ecosystems and Troubled Democracy: A Global Synthesis of the State of Knowledge on New Media, AI and Data Governance”, an international team of researchers assesses the role of information ecosystems.

Mit Dall-E generierte Illustration eines Newsrooms, den ein Roboter und ein Mensch betreten
Projekt Project of the DFG Research Group ComAI

Automation of News and Journalistic Autonomy

The project, which is part of the DFG research group ComAI, investigates communicative AI in journalism by analyzing the associated challenges for journalistic autonomy at the interactional, organizational, and societal levels.

Handydisplay mit mehren App-Icons Chat GPT
Projekt Project of the DFG Research Group ComAI

The Juridification of Communicative AI

The project, which is part of the DFG research group ComAI, is investigating the legal framework for communicative bots (in particular ChatGPT) and social bots (in particular X and Facebook) – on the one hand from the perspective of communication law, and on the other hand from the perspective of emerging AI regulation.

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