Media Culture and Media Philosophy

Research in the field of media culture in Lüneburg does not focus so much on specific media cultures shaped by digitality, which have now replaced the traditional individual media. Following the "end of the media" (Zielinski), it is primarily concerned with overarching media-cultural facts, such as those that shape above all the various ways of existence and ways of life under the technological conditions of the 20th and 21st centuries: Algorithmization, data-drivenness, fascination with control and steering, connectivity, cooperation, affectivity, simulation, environmentality, participation, post-mediality are some of the keywords central to the description of current media-related debates.

To understand these media-cultural facts, it is necessary to work historically and systematically. In doing so, the history of cybernation since 1900 and up to our neo-cybernetic present, which unfolds along the above-mentioned phenomena and problem areas, must be examined in exactly the same way as a corresponding theory formation must be promoted, which supports and intensifies this media, knowledge and cultural-historical research work. To give a few examples, we are interested in the concrete transformation of infrastructures, the genesis of "augmented relationality" (thrift) as a result of the implementation of relational technologies, or the rise of a behavioral economy in times of environmental media of the third cybernetics. But also questions of the associated engineering of affectivity and modes of subjectivation or, finally, whether there can be something like a new, now technological humanism that is at the height of today's states of alienation are of great relevance. However, more far-reaching transformations in conceptual and theoretical politics induced by media technology also need to be evaluated: What conceptual map do we actually have to work with in order to adequately grasp our own media technological condition? What other fields of knowledge provide us with conceptualizations that we can use, acquire, and translate for our work? And which questions drive media studies beyond its (today so conspicuous, sometimes exuberant) reference to the present, what is the always insistent aspect of media that we as media scientists have to face? Ideally, a praxeologically oriented media culture research and a concise theory work go hand in hand to deal with such problem areas and questions. The historical systematic center of the chair consists of the development of a general ecology of media and techniques as a way of thinking and describing the "technosphere" (Peter Haff) and the corresponding techno-ecological culture of meaning in which we live.

The terms and methods we use have many disciplinary backgrounds and origins. If we are to name a few names who do not cease to inspire our work through their terminological daring and their conceptual richness, the most prominent of these would be Gilbert Simondon, Donna Haraway, Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Kittler, Jacques Derrida, Tim Ingold, Michel Foucault, Hans Blumenberg, and Karl Marx.