Since the return of war to Europe, spaces and spatial semantics have once again been accorded greater urgency. Even Realpolitik can no longer do without geopolitical references. The hopeful expectation that the latest media and technologies would do away with space or that supranational institutions would render geostrategic power projections obsolete is hardly shared anymore.
However, the great attention that geopolitics has been receiving recently is not without its problems: Particularly popular concepts owe their success not necessarily to their substantive content, but rather to an “economy of attention” whose logic follows rules different from those of political science, history, human geography, or the sociology of space.
The research question of SFB 1472 focuses on the conditions and consequences of the popularity or lack thereof of geopolitical concepts, myths, topoi, and analyses that circulate in Western societies and now help shape both political action and scholarly reflection. Why does a geopolitical scenario that becomes a best-selling book have a greater chance of shaping the discourse than other approaches? What are the implications of the academic podcast format for the perspective on geostrategic crises?
Significant public attention focused on a few actors and scenarios implies that other actors and scenarios receive little or no attention and also play no role in political decision-making. It is conceivable that highly popular geopolitical clichés actually prevent an accurate assessment of the situation, precisely because they draw all the attention to themselves and, in doing so, render other approaches and expertise invisible. The much-discussed “economics of attention”—this is the working hypothesis of the SFB—also applies to geopolitical issues. Anyone who sensationalizes pressing geopolitical issues to gain political attention enters an arena in which resonance depends not only on scholarly soundness, but also on prominence, a talent for staging, rhetorical impact, or the courage to simplify. In any case, popularity and geopolitical discourse are intricately linked—and it is precisely this relationship that will be the focus of the 2026 annual conference.
You can find the complete program at the following link: https://sfb1472.uni-siegen.de/veranstaltungen/jahrestagung-2026-populaere-geopolitik
