Ever since 2015, the starting point of the so called „refugee crisis“, the German society discusses how to deal with refugee movements, how to fight the causes of them and how to integrate migrants. Within this debate, the media influence what kind of opinions and arguments about refugees, migration and integration dominate.
What kind of information about these topics are percieved by adolescents at the age of ten to 16 and how they deal with these information is analyzed by a research project at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf (HHU). The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for two years (2017-2019).
The key questions are: How do media that are used by adolescents cover migration, refugees and integration? How do adolescents communication about these topics on social media? To answer these questions, the team at HHU conducts standardized content analysis of the media coverage as well as communication about these issues on social media.
The project is part of a larger research project that is coordinated by the „JFF – Institut für Medienpädagogik in Forschung und Praxis“ in Munich. Other partners are the „Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur“ in Leipzig and the „Zentrum für Ethik der Medien und der digitalen Gesellschaft (zem::dg)“.
Ansprechpartner
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Vowe
Communication Studies
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Vowe has held the Chair I for Communication and Media Studies at the HHU-Düsseldorf since 2004. He has been spokesman for the DFG research group “Political Communication in the Online World” since 2011. His research interests include online political communication, media policy, and security in the media.
Within the DIID, he is particularly interested in deviant forms of political communication in online contexts.