Digital Cultures
Digital Cultures intellectually and conceptually analyzes the myriad cultural changes that have come about due to the development of digital technologies over more than half a century. In this way, it provides a research environment for conducting a precise, methodologically rigorous, and unprejudiced examination of the diverse phenomena and challenges faced by digital cultures.
Digital Cultures intellectually and conceptually analyzes the myriad cultural changes that have come about due to the development of digital technologies over more than half a century. In this way, it provides a research environment for conducting a precise, methodologically rigorous, and unprejudiced examination of the diverse phenomena and challenges faced by digital cultures. The concept of digitality refers to the way in which digital technologies unfold a culture-generating power. They are not merely tools of action, perception, cognition, or communication; they also intervene in contexts of meaning and orders of knowledge, and in processes of reflection and practices where the European tradition of thought had assumed the human subject was self-determined and empowered to act. This process is not yet imminent due to so-called “digitalization,” but it has already materialized (with often serious consequences) around the world.
In contrast to research on economic, political, and technological changes that have been summarized under the buzzword “digitalization,” this research focus does not presuppose an existing “culture” that merely needs to be digitalized. Nor does it aim to immediately generate applications and innovations to solve problems. Rather, we understand that the ways digital media technologies have emerged over the last seventy years should cause us to reflect on the ways our understanding of culture has also drastically changed. This has impacted our ideas about history and historicity and, thus, of cultural studies research objects, methods, and perspectives. In response to the ways that digital media technologies have destabilized social routines, cultural practices, and scientific standards, research is this area takes part in the tradition of Kulturwissenschaften as a "crisis science" and refers to a tradition of the "first cultural studies" (though one that is informed by a global perspective and renewed for the present).
Thus, the term "digital cultures" does not denote a primacy of culture or media technology but rather refers to the genuine insight cultural studies can bring to the complex interplay between media and culture. This research focus is therefore critically interdisciplinary, in that the humanities and social sciences both deal with those specific phenomena by means of which the ways digital cultures have become manifest and can be reconstructed in their genealogies. This research area involves disciplines like media studies, cultural theory, and the social science approaches of sociology, organization studies and cultural anthropology. Their common goal is to develop and establish a Kulturwissenschaft of digitality.
Doing Digital Identities (DigID), Prof. Dr. Stephan Scheel, Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organisation (ISKO), since 2023, ERC-Starting Grant
Zukunftslabor »Gesellschaft und Arbeit, Prof. Dr. Andreas Bernard, Institut of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media, since 2019, Förderung durch das MWK
Automating the Logistical City: Space, Algorithms, Speculation, Prof. Dr. Armin Beverungen, Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organisation (ISKO), seit 2021, Förderung durch das MWK/VolkswagenStiftung
Scoring - Analyse des Sozialkreditsystems in der VR China und des Scorings im Westen, Teilprojekt: Daten-Infrastruktur in Ost und West, Prof. Dr. Claus Pias, Prof. (apl.) Dr. Martin Warnke, Institut für Kultur und Ästhetik digitaler Medien, seit 2021, Förderung durch das BMBF
code/verstehen: Philologie und Theorie algorithmischer Quelltexte, Dr. Simon Roloff, Institut für Kultur und Ästhetik digitaler Medien, seit 2023, Förderung durch die VolkswagenStiftung
Medien der Assistenz, Prof. Dr. Jan Müggenburg, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hagen, Institut für Kultur und Ästhetik digitaler Medien, 2018-22, Förderung durch die DFG
Digital Cultures Research Lab, Prof. Dr. Timon Beyes et al., 2013-22, Förderung durch MWK/VolkswagenStiftung
Entnetzung. Imaginäre, Medientechnologien, Politiken, Prof. Dr. Timon Beyes, Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organisation, 2018-22, Förderung durch die DFG
Gamification. Grenzverschiebungen zwischen Spielerischem und Nicht-Spielerischem, Dr. Mathias Fuchs, Institut für Kultur und Ästhetik digitaler Medien, 2018-21, Förderung durch die DFG
Technoökologien der Partizipation: Eine medien-philosophisch-ethnologische Neuperspektivierung, Prof. Dr. Erich Hörl, Institut für Kultur und Ästhetik digitaler Medien 2015-18, Förderung durch die DFG