Jun.-Prof. Annie Waldherr Receives DGPuK Journal Award

(18.05.2018) At this year’s 63th DGPuK (German Communication Association) conference, Annie Waldherr received the 1st award for the best journal article in 2017 for her article “Öffentlichkeit als komplexes System. Theoretischer Entwurf und methodische Konsequenzen" (“Public Sphere as a complex system. A theoretical draft and methodological consequences”), published in the autumn edition of the German journal “Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft“.

In her article, Annie Waldherr shows how concepts stemming from the field of complexity research can be employed in order to explain dynamic macro-phenomena within the public sphere such as news waves, polarization and communication cascades. She discusses to which extent the public sphere has indeed become more complex through digitization and the consequences for the dynamic of public communication processes. The article is a plea for further developing system theoretical approaches of the public towards a theory of complex, adaptive systems, compatible with other models of the public sphere and the interdisciplinary complexity research.

The DGPuK Journal-Award is conferred annually during the annual conference. The winning article is chosen by a jury from journal articles published in the previous year in the german communication journals of “Publizistik”, “Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft” and „SCM“.
The full journal article „Öffentlichkeit als komplexes System. Theoretischer Entwurf und methodische Konsequenzen” (“Public Sphere as a complex system. A theoretical draft and methodological consequences”) by Annie Waldherr can be found here.

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