From March 19th to 21st 2025, the Freie Universität Berlin, represented by the Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft and Weizenbaum-Institut, hosted the 70th Annual Conference of the German Society for Journalism and Communication Studies (DGPuK). This year’s theme – “Public Sphere(s) and Values”, aimed to shed light on significant events from the last few years – from the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in the Middle East to the Global Climate Crisis. Centering the conference around the topic of “Values”, scholars had the opportunity to explore those such as freedom, justice, equality, safety, solidarity, and truth.
The conference was opened with a keynote from macrosociologist Prof. Dr. Steffen Mau (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), who talked about his trigger-points theory and its ever-increasing relevance in Germany.
A further highlight from the event was the Weizenbaum Fellow Talk, where Dr. Jakob Ohme (Weizenbaum-Institut) and Prof. Dr. Barbara Pfetsch (Freie Universität Berlin and Weizenbaum-Institut) moderated presentations by distinguished fellows Prof. Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Prof. Dr. Claes de Vreese (University of Amsterdam) on the current state of communication research.
The research group Dynamics of Digital Mobilization was featured prominently during the conference. Dr. Kilian Bühling, Baoning Gong, and Miriam Milzner (Freie Universität Berlin and Weizenbaum-Institut) all chaired a panel each, moderating discussions with scholars on media literacy, digital self-determination and conspiracy theories respectively. Baoning Gong presented her findings on comparing online identity repertoires in German and U.S. far-right movement networks across Twitter, Gab, Gettr, and Telegram. She and Dr. Kilian Bühling also shared their insights on ephemerality as a value-affordance, using the case of far-right messages by the AfD on Telegram.
We express our gratitude to all scholars who joined the conference, and are especially thankful to Steffen Göths, Hannah Harmuth, and Antje Wolters for bearing the brunt of responsibilities around organizing the conference!