Communicatio Socialis (ComSoc)

The research project “Ritual Practice” (2021–2024), undertaken at the Heidelberg University for Jewish Studies, examined the extent to which Jews experience rejection due to their Jewish ritual practice. Under the direction of Rabbi Birgit...

This essay explores the question of what role media reporting plays in the increasingly polarized discussion about sustainable social change. The party “Bündnis 90/Die Grünen” is considered to be a key driver of transformation and has lost a...

The more populist and extremist tendencies threaten social cohesion, the more the commitment to an inclusive and democratic society becomes an ethical necessity. Populist narratives must be questioned and the values of democracy and social cohesion...

Through service learning, future professional communicators in higher education can be sensitized to social responsibility. Empirical findings suggest that students engaged in service learning not only develop professional competencies but are also...

This article focuses on the sports film, which, like every film genre, is characterised by specific conventions of audiovisual storytelling. Six selected sports films are presented, which represent individual integration in sport on the one hand and...

Contrary to a persistent cultural pessimism which predicts the end of the printed book, numerous bookworms are gathering on TikTok under the hashtag #booktok, thereby not only changing digital book cultures but also real numbers in the German and...

Western democratic societies are currently facing a significant stress test in terms of domestic and foreign policy. In the search for both explanatory possibilities for the manifold ongoing crises and solutions thereto, science also sees itself...

The present study examines the type of criticism expressed by so-called "broadcast objectors" toward public broadcasting and the role played by their refusal to pay the obligatory fee as well as their non-use of public offerings. Using a...

Social media content that is not politically, militarily or journalistically labeled is rapidly gaining importance in communication about wars. Emotional live images from war zones play a fundamental role for reconnaissance by intelligence services...

The article examines research-related ethical challenges in dealing with personal image material in science. Based on a literature review and analysis of existing approaches and anonymization methods, the need for differentiated image ethics is...

What responsibility does the German government have for the fact that thousands of local staff were left behind in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in 2021? Secret govern- ment files reveal the answer. This article describes what happened when...

The article deals with the shifting processes of remembering the Holocaust on social media. The research question is: How is the use of photography in the digital world changing, especially after the events of October 7, 2023, the attack on Israel...

Editorial offices are increasingly addressing their media users openly, explaining why they show (or don’t show) certain photos, often with reference to social media. In digital photojournalism, competencies in the ethics of imaging are being...

Our brain processes them faster, they touch us more emotionally and we memorize them better than words: the power of images is great – and so is the potential damage they can cause. At the same time, we have never been surrounded by as many images...

The separation of different journalistic representations is considered an essential prerequisite for the credibility of media. In the Code of Honor for the Austrian press, the principle of separation is regulated in point 3 (“distinctness”)....