Projects

Transport-related greenhouse gas emissions remain a key challenge for achieving climate targets. Despite technological advances, the transport sector continues to contribute significantly to overall emissions. In rural areas in particular, implementing the urgently needed transport and mobility transition is a challenge.

The MOVEwell project is making an important contribution here: an intelligent, demand-oriented expansion of local public transport should not only achieve positive effects for the climate, environment and health, but also strengthen social cohesion in rural regions.

Under the leadership of the Bauhaus.Mobility Hub (BMH) and the Thuringian Mobility Innovation Center (ThIMo), the project "Mobility Network for Valuable Rural Living Spaces" (MOVEwell for short) was launched in autumn 2024. The project region comprises the districts of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, Weimarer Land and Ilm-Kreis as well as the cities of Weimar, Bad Berka and Ilmenau. The aim is to make local public transport more efficient in terms of time and more individualized through on-demand services such as shared cabs or on-call buses.

In cooperation with three regional employers - the Weimar industrial estate, the Bad Berka clinic and Arbeiterwohlfahrt Saalfeld gGmbH (AWO) - approaches to company mobility management are being tested in three real-world laboratories. They are investigating how environmentally friendly means of transport can be integrated into company structures and what incentives can be created for employees to switch to sustainable means of transport such as bicycles, buses or trains.

Since, in addition to technical and infrastructural solutions, social behavioral changes are also crucial for the success of the mobility transition, the International Risk, Crisis, and Science Communication Research Group is supporting the project with social science research throughout its duration. The focus is on surveying mobility needs and analyzing the perception, acceptance and use of innovative mobility services. The research group thus contributes its expertise in the field of risk communication on environmental risks to the MOVEwell project and supports the transfer of knowledge between science, practice and the public.

Project as part of the "Sustainable mobility in regional transformation areas - in metropolitan regions, regiopolitan regions and inter-municipal associations" guideline of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Duration: September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2029 Project volume: 4.6 million euros

Connected and automated driving is essential for a digital society. It is the key to safe, clean, efficient and comfortable mobility, both in individual and passenger transportation. Technological developments in the recent past have made enormous progress in drive, control, sensor and communication technologies; however, there are still numerous hurdles to overcome in research, development, communication and transfer with regard to automated driving in local public transport.

The joint project KREATÖR, carried out by the Thuringian Innovation Center for Mobility (ThIMo), took up this challenge by forming a close alliance with other R&D activities of the ThIMo and its environment; this included in particular the Ilm district project on highly automated driving in local public transport with the aim of further developing local public transport to increase its sustainability and user acceptance. KREATÖR not only provided the scientific support required for its successful implementation, but also underpinned it with innovative R&D measures in the direction of future-oriented radio and vehicle technologies for safety-relevant mobility applications. The environment of a real-world laboratory with communication-scientific acceptance analyses and transfer measures offered the best conditions for a user-centered approach and the creation of an innovation-open ecosystem with enormous connection potential.

The project was funded by the Free State of Thuringia and managed by the Thüringer Aufbaubank. It pursued three core objectives: 1. scientific support for the pilot operation of automated campus buses 2. innovative technologies for highly automated and networked driving in the research fields of radio technologies and vehicle technologies 3. science communication and transfer

Our tasks in the project included the social science analysis of risk perception and public acceptance as well as the conception of public relations and strategic technology and science communication.

Project duration: 2021-2023

Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), we analyzed together with the Departments of Computational Communication Science, Databases and Information Systems and Media Studies at Ilmenau University of Technology and the Institute for Risk Assessment in Berlin how traditional media provided information in their online reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis management or risk communication of governments or health institutions in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the USA and thus encouraged the population to behave in a self-protective manner. Three key questions were the focus of the sub-projects from June 2021 to the end of 2024: (1) What statements and messages about Covid-19 did governments and healthcare institutions communicate to the public in the respective countries? (2) How did the media report on the pandemic and the associated risk messages from governments? (3) How did the population perceive the pandemic and the risk messages?

Duration: 2021-2024

Further information: https://www.tu-ilmenau.de/decipher

On 12 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus a pandemic. Since then, the virus has changed almost all aspects of social coexistence. This also includes studying at universities worldwide. Infection protection measures had to be implemented in a very short space of time, which resulted in distance learning, among other things. Technical systems were set up, examination formats changed and the work of teaching staff also shifted to the digital world. This brought with it massive challenges for university communication. It has to take into account a wide variety of cultural contexts, as universities today have an international character. Crisis communication research still lacks intercultural approaches, especially beyond Europe and the USA. The aim of this project was therefore to investigate COVID-19 communication at universities worldwide in order to present and compare risk communication approaches in relation to different cultural contexts and thus also to develop practical recommendations for the future.

The following research questions were to be answered:

1) How were risk and crisis communication messages created and distributed to internal publics at universities worldwide during the Corona pandemic?

2) What communication skills and competencies do university communicators have in different countries?

3) What challenges did they face during COVID-19?

The IDEA model for creating effective guiding crisis and risk communication (Sellnow, Lane, Sellnow & Littlefield, 2017) and Schwartz's (2006) Culutral Values Theory served as the theoretical basis for the answers.

In total, semi-structured qualitative guided interviews were conducted with communication managers from universities in 18 different countries. The cultural clusters of English-speaking, Latin American, Western European, Eastern European, African and South Asian countries were taken into account.

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the technologies that is believed to have a lasting impact on social coexistence and the global economy. Even if the current state of development of AI is still a long way from 'independently thinking' machines (also known as 'strong AI'), some applications have already found their way into everyday life (e.g. autonomous driving, facial or speech recognition).

Alongside positive voices on the opportunities and potential of AI technologies, there have also been critical words and warnings in public debates and media coverage - including from prominent figures such as Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) and Stephen Hawking. The physicist and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute Max Tegmark commented in 2017: "Unfortunately, the necessary call for sober research plans, which are urgently needed, is almost suffocated by a discordance of ill-informed views permeating the blogosphere." (p. 76).

The accusation is directed at journalists from a wide range of media and requires a more precise empirical survey, which is to be carried out as part of this pilot study. Although it can be assumed that this public debate will have a substantial impact on the research, regulation and further development of AI, empirical communication research has so far hardly dealt with the media construction of AI technologies or the strategic (risk) communication of actors in business, science and politics.

This research gap is to be closed with the current research project "Framing of 'general' and 'narrow' Artificial Intelligence (AI)". The question to be answered is:

Which frames and risk descriptions dominate media coverage of artificial intelligence and its fields of application?

With the help of a comparative content analysis, frames relating to AI technologies in German and international media will be identified, quantified and described in terms of content. The focus is on the risk perception and assessment of specific AI applications ('narrow' AI) and general artificial intelligence ('general' AI). The content analysis is based on the framing approach and is linked to established concepts of risk communication, risk perception and science communication research.

The pilot project is part of a new research focus that the Department of Public Relations and Technology Communication, headed by Dr. Andreas Schwarz, is currently developing intensively and in interdisciplinary cooperation with AI experts. The aim is to link questions of AI communication with aspects of risk and crisis communication in particular.

Project duration: 2017-2018

The central problems of global society (e.g. climate, food, security, poverty) cannot be solved at national level alone. Rather, since the middle of the 20th century, transnational organizations have increasingly been involved. They fulfill central tasks in international politics. Not only intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as UN organizations, the World Trade Organization, the European Union and ASEAN, but also international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) such as Greenpeace, Oxfam and Amnesty International are part of this international network. In the event of a crisis, these organizations are particularly and usually existentially affected. Despite the importance of these organizations in global civil society and politics, crisis communication and crisis resilience have so far mainly been studied for companies. For INGOs and IGOs, however, there have so far been almost no generalizable scientific findings that provide information on the instruments, resources or structures of crisis communication for these actors. Furthermore, there is a lack of reliable findings on specific influencing factors that explain the crisis vulnerability or resilience of transnational non-profit organizations in the context of national, international or internal organizational crises. The research project aims to close this research gap and make a substantial contribution to the development of theories to describe and explain the crisis communication management and crisis resilience of the most influential transnational NGOs and IGOs.

As part of an initial content analysis of media coverage of crisis incidents by INGOs and IGOs in an international context, the relevance of the topic from a media perspective will be determined. The content analysis is based on Entman's framing concept (1993) and on findings from crisis communication research. Three national daily newspapers (quality and tabloid media) from each of six countries (India, Great Britain, USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland) will be analyzed.

Project duration: 2018-2020

Contact:Dr. Andreas Schwarz

Global crises with effects beyond geographical and functional borders are among the greatest challenges of the 21st century (OECD, 2011). The European Union is also repeatedly confronted with such crises. Examples in recent decades include the financial and economic crisis, the migration crisis and currently the coronavirus pandemic.

Such crises exceed the possibilities of national crisis management and in some cases require supranational political leadership that can maintain the ability to act and drive forward the search for solutions (Parker & Karlsson, 2014). However, cross-border crises in particular are characterized by an 'authority vacuum' (Ansell, Boin & Hart, 2014). Political leadership then usually remains informal and is made more difficult by the fact that it has to convince citizens from different political and geographical areas with their own interests and identities (Van Esch, 2017). The thesis of the research project is therefore that cross-border political crisis leadership is also a question of public perception. The project thus follows recent concepts that deal with public visibility as a leadership resource and focuses on a publicly perceptible construction of leadership (e.g. Glaab, 2010).

The media play a decisive role as a primary source of political information. Their media construction of cross-border leadership not only has far-reaching consequences for the perception and recognition of such leadership, but also for the evaluation of the respective crisis management and the nation or institution represented (Balmas, 2018 & 2017; Aaldering & Vliegenthart, 2016).

The planned research project therefore examines the question of how European media construct cross-border political leadership in crises in the media and also legitimize it by referring to the personal or functional resources of potential actors. The analysis focuses on publicly observable processes of attributing and justifying responsibility across geographical and political borders (Schwarz, 2014; Gerhards, Offerhaus & Roose 2007 & 2009; Roose, Sommer & Scholl, 2016). A quantitative content analysis is used to examine the reporting on two cross-border crises in four European countries. The comparative research design with a country and crisis comparison helps to capture the influence of various contextual factors on the media construction of cross-border political crisis management.

Literature:

Ansell, C.; Boin, A. & Hart, Paul t' (2014). Political Leadership in Times of Crisis. In R. A. W. Rhodes & Paul t' Hart, The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, pp. 418 - 436. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Aaldering, L. & Vliegenthart, R. (2016). Political leaders and the media. Can we measure political leadership images in newspapers using computer-assisted content analysis? Qual Quant 50, pp. 1871 - 1905.

Balmas, M. (2018). Tell Me Who Is Your Leader, and I Will Tell You Who You Are: Foreign Leaders' Perceived Personality and Public Attitudes toward Their Countries and Citizenry. American Journal of Political Science, 62(2), pp. 499 - 514.

Balmas, M. (2017). Bad News: The Changing Coverage of National Leaders in Foreign Media of Western Democracies. Mass Communication and Society, 20(5), pp. 663 - 685.

Gerhards, J.; Offerhaus, A. & Roose, J. (2007). The public attribution of responsibility. On the development of a content-analytical instrument. Cologne Journal of Sociology 59 (1), pp. 105 - 124.

Gerhards, J.; Offerhaus, A. & Roose, J. (2009). Who is responsible? The European Union, its nation states and the mass media attribution of responsibility for success and failure. In F. Marcinkowski & B. Pfetsch, Politics in the media democracy. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, pp. 529 - 558. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Glaab, M. (2010). Public leadership - theoretical approaches, findings and perspectives of research. Austrian Journal of Political Science, 39 (3), pp. 321 - 335.

OECD (2011). Future Global Shocks. Improving Risk Governance. OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policies. URL: www.oecd.org/governance/risk/futureglobalshocks.htm (19.04.2018).

Parker, C. & Karlsson, C. (2014). Leadership and International Cooperation. In R. A. W. Rhodes & Pault' Hart, The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, pp. 580 - 596. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Roose, J.; Sommer, M. & Scholl, F. (2016). Debt crisis and debt issue. Attribution of responsibility between Germany and Greece in the eurozone crisis. Research Journal Social Movement, 29 (1), pp. 39 - 50.

Schwarz, A. (2014). The relevance of attributions of cause and responsibility in the context of news production and reception. Theoretical and methodological potentials of attribution theory. In W. Loosen & M. Dohle, Journalism and (its) audience, pp. 275 - 299. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.

Van Esch, F. A. W. J. (2017). The paradoxes of legitimate EU leadership. An analysis of the multi-level leadership of Angela Merkel and Alexis Tsipras during the euro crisis. Journal of European Integration, 39 (2), S. 223 - 237.

Start of the project: July 2019

Contact:Elisabeth Wagner-Olfermann