ZeM Annual Focus “Platformatizations”

The ZeM – Brandenburg Center for Media Studies announces the annual focus “Platformatizations” for 2025/26: Start in April 2025, submissions of funding applications are now possible.

With its annual focus, the ZeM would like to promote inter-university exchange in Brandenburg and highlight the common profile of the 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).

Following the focus on “Digital Realities” (2022/23) and “Control of Loss” (2023/24), the ZeM’s new annual focus “Platformatizations” aims to examine the media conditions of current challenges that are often referred to in general terms such as disinformation and propaganda, the post-factual age, but also the division of society and the fragmentation of the public sphere. What digital and material prerequisites make the phenomena addressed and the rhetoric in which they are discussed possible in the first place? Which infrastructures and media technologies are used to maintain them? Which network and algorithmic logics/logistics promote them? In which (post-)audiovisual configurations of cultural fantasies do they present themselves? But also: which ones would allow to resist and disrupt them?

The portmanteau word “platformatizations” is intended to address both the platform- and format-bound nature of current developments, the impression of their general flatness and the inevitability of their respective formatting.

We look forward to receiving funding applications from various research contexts and projects. Possible event formats within the annual focus are workshops, lectures and lecture series, discussion rounds, performative interventions or presentations at ZeM and the participating universities.

Applications for funding can only be submitted by ZeM members. A ZeM membership is generally open to anyone who is employed or associated with media studies teaching and research at one of the participating universities in Brandenburg. If you would like to become a member, please send the completed membership application form by e-mail to: .

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

Graphic: Kateryna Tykhonenko

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