German Communication Studies facing the challenge of digital media change: debates and controversies in the scientific community since the 1990s

Abstract

The article deals with the development of German Communication Studies since the mid-1990s until today. Its focus lays on the discussions on new media and their consequences for the redefinition of the scientific field as “New Communication Science”. Different to the scientific tradition of the ‘old’ German “Publizistikwissen-schaft” with the main focus on mass media and public communication, the ‘new’ field is characterized by a broader view on communication and media in reaction to the interweaving of interpersonal and media communication in the digital age. Ac-cording to the idea of science as social process, this paper asks how the new orien-tation gained acceptance in the scientific community and reconstructs the scholarly debates on this path. These include external triggers of debate such as the Silber-mann controversy that resulted in the appointment of an internal self-conception committee and the very first paper on the profile of the discipline in Germany. The reconstructed debates in this paper outline the development of two strands within the scientific community: traditionalists and visionaries. Although the intensity of discussions on the disciplinary identity of German Communication Studies abated since the adoption of the second self-conception paper that embraced the diversity of the discipline, debates on the extension versus limitation of the range of research subjects in the course of changing media environments and societies prevail until present day.