The Center for Media and Interactivity (ZMI)

The Center for Media and Interactivity (ZMI) at Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU) in Germany conducts applied and practical research on media-related issues. It focuses on the concept of interactivity and the diverse effects of interactive digital media in society, politics, economics, culture and science. The ZMI implements research projects, tests interactive platforms, holds conferences and workshops, and edits publications such as the book series »Interaktiva« with the Campus Verlag.

The ZMI represents an institutionalized network of research areas within the JLU dealing with media-related questions. The primary focus is on electronic and digital media. The ZMI has been in existence since 2001 and is divided into five sections, comprising researchers from a wide spectrum of disciplines such as sociology / media sociology, societal comparison; history / recent history, contemporary history, Eastern European history, didactics of history, specialized journalism history; history of art; Turkish studies; Slavic studies/ Slavic linguistics and Cultural Studies, Slavic linguistics; German studies / historical linguistics and German language history, language theory and language description, German Linguistics and language didactics, German language and media didactics, applied linguistics and computational linguistics, German as a foreign and second language, recent German literature and cultural studies, Arbeitsstelle Holocaustliteratur; Romance studies / Spanish and Portuguese linguistics, Romance languages didactics, English studies / English didactics, applied linguistics, English linguistics and history of English; Applied theater studies.

Two themes have dominated the ZMI’s research interests within the last years: the impact of the media on communicative cultural techniques such as reading and writing, in the project »Cultural Techniques and Their Mediatization« (a focus of the LOEWE-Program of the Hessian Ministry for Sciences and the Arts); and the effects of digitization on scholarly communication in »Interactive Science – Internal Scholarly Communication via Digital Media« (funded by the »Key Topics in the Humanities«-Program of the Volkswagen Foundation). Since 2012, the research focus has shifted to the projects GeoBib and news to use. An online bibliography of the early Holocaust and concentration camp literature (1933-1949) in German and Polish language will be established within the project "GeoBib". "news to use" analyses if and how the education of young people who are currently doing their apprenticeships is effected by daily newspaper reading.

The ZMI has cooperative partnerships with university-related and non-university research facilities and educational institutions, with foundations, political and administrative institutions, as well as with media companies and other enterprises, both in Germany and abroad.

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