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Students get to know the subjects, questions and current research issues of a special sociolo-gy (consumption, town, body or knowledge and technical sociology). They know how to describe the development lines of the respective research field and to determine their essen-tial theoretical perspectives and relationship to sociological tradition of knowledge. Students can evaluate and discuss the relevance and importance of sociological perspectives and inter-pretative-qualitative culture-sociological research approaches in the context of empirical and interdisciplinary research fields. They are able to compare, link and evaluate positions within research discussions. Students know how to transfer their skills to new contexts and to devel-op individual research issues.

We live in a society that employs media in order to maintain and reflect on itself. Media and their communication logics shape different social systems like politics and economy, religion and science. In addition, they also shape the relationship with ourselves, whether by serving as mirrors or projection surfaces.

Media sociology is about the analysis of social media effects, potentials and inner logics of media, as well as about the question of what the term medium actually means.

The course provides an introduction to basic theoretical approaches and problems of media sociology. In addition, currrent questions and research programs relevant to media sociology will be discussed.

• Discussions
• Presentations (depending on the number of participants: working groups or solo presentations)
• Group exercises

• Active participation
• Reading of obligatory texts
• Preparation of questions on specific obligatory literature
• Presentation or similar contribution (alone or in working group)
• Final paper

Krämer, Sybille, Medien, Boten, Spuren, Wenig mehr als ein Literaturbericht, in: Münker, Stefan, Roesler, Alexander (Hrsg.) Was ist ein Medium? Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main, 2. Auflage 2012 [2008].

Luhmann, Niklas, Die Realität der Massenmedien, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 4. Auflage 2009.

Vogl, Joseph: Medien-Werden. Galileis Fernrohr, in: Engell, Lorenz, Vogl, Joseph (Hrsg.), Archiv für Mediengeschichte: Mediale Historiographien, Universitätsverlag, Weimar 2001. 
 

positive completion of the compulsory module according to § 5 Para 1 No 9