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 public law, political science, sociology, education, pedagogy, linguistics, computational linguistics, foreign language learning and teaching, history, art history and art education, applied theater studies, and literary and cultural studies.

Two themes have dominated the ZMI’s research interests since its two major joint research projects took up work in 2008: 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).

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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