Annual focus on “Digital Realities”

Overview of the academic events funded as part of the annual focus on “Digital Realities” (2022/23).

The following events were funded by the ZeM within the annual focus on “Digital Realities”:

• Workshop „Digital Gaslighting as a Case Study in the Problematics of OOO (Object-Oriented Ontological) Theories of Media“
• Workshop „Capturing the (Game) World: Computer Games as New Places for Photographic Practice“
• Workshop „Capturing the (Game) World: Ways of Looking & Ways of Playing. Virtual Cameras and Photogrammetry“
• Graduiertentagung „un:reale Interaktionsräume. Formen sozialer Ordnung im Spektrum medienspezifischer Interaktion“
• Workshop „Capturing the (Game) World: The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos“
• ZeM SPRING LECTURE „We Are Born Obsolete. Günther Anders and the Post-literary Condition“
• Vortrag „Podcasts in der Suchthilfe. Erfahrungen aus zwei Jahren Social Media zwischen Viralen Posts und Shadow Bans“
• ZeM SPRING LECTURE „The Mothers of AI? Alan Turing’s Response to Ada Lovelace“
• Workshop: „AI-Technology as Interactional Human Culture. Language, Data Practice and Social Struggle“

Please note that the annual focus on “Digital Realities” has been discontinued with the end of the academic year 2022/23! For 2023/24, the ZeM is once again inviting proposals for an annual focus, the topic is “Control of Loss”.

With the call for proposals within the annual focus, the ZeM would like to promote inter-university exchange in Brandenburg and to bundle initiatives and highlight the common profile of research interests represented by its members.

Here you can find the detailed call for proposals with all information on how to apply (PDF in German).

Digital Realities, the first annual focus of the ZeM, is based on the assumption that it seems less and less meaningful to make categorical distinctions between “online” and “offline”. The differentiation introduced in the 1990s, which sought to distinguish “real” life from virtual life, has become increasingly irrelevant today. Instead, we move through different realities that complement, replace, reinforce or play off each other (filter bubbles, echo chambers). Although the image or notion of the digital is invested with a specific immateriality (thus we speak of the cloud, networks and information flows), the implications and consequences of digital realities are, however, just as material as those of offline life. The construction of a Tesla factory in Grünheide, the expansion of 5G, new camera technologies or the digitalisation push accelerated by the pandemic – all this leads to shifts in social, economic, psychological and ecological parameters that must be critically described in their ambivalence and in the context of mediatisation as the production of realities. This once again underlines the necessity of basic research in media studies, conceptual work and methodological reflection.

With this annual focus, the ZeM would like to encourage its members to present research interests, questions and approaches and to strive for new collaborations. Submissions are possible as of now (also in English). Please send your (informal) application by email to: (recommended: information on the type and title of the event or series, type and amount of costs, information on the time, duration and location of the event, information on participants/ addressees, if applicable).

Possible formats within the annual focus are workshops, lectures and lecture series, discussion rounds, performative interventions or presentations at ZeM or at the participating universities (if possible, hybrid formats are welcome).

All information on the call for applications and the application procedure can be found in the detailed call for applications (PDF in German). If you have any further questions, please contact the academic coordinator of the ZeM, Fritz Schlüter, phone +49(0)3 31 / 81 32 81-68, .

Applications for funding can only be submitted by ZeM members. A ZeM membership is open to anyone who is associated with one of the participating Brandenburg universities. If you would like to become a ZeM member, please send the application for membership (PDF) by email to: .

Graphic: Menno Aden

Learn more about the ZeM – Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies.