Prof. Dr. Carolin Gerlitz
What do people do with media and what do media do with people? Prof. Dr. Carolin Gerlitz is spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Center Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen, which deals with phenomena of the digital society. The development is rapid. Researchers are increasingly looking at sensor media and artificial intelligence and
are discovering that technical and human sensorium are becoming increasingly intertwined.
Anyone celebrating their 80th birthday in this decade was there in 1954 when people sat in front of the radio to watch the World Cup final. They witnessed the arrival of the television in living rooms. From the black and white three-channel selection to the colorful zapping variety. They still worked with typewriters and later with computers, played the first video games with their children, but still turned a dial to make phone calls and put films into a camera. And today? Their smartphones show them when their blood pressure is too high or they haven't exercised enough. They communicate with their grandchildren via WhatsApp. They read the news online and are relieved when their car automatically helps them park. A human life in the media turbo. And the pace remains high, changing all areas of life and coexistence in addition to what is briefly referred to as "digitalization" in technological terms.
The Collaborative Research Center (CRC) "Media of Cooperation" at the University of Siegen is aiming right at the heart of this rapid development and asks: What do people do with media and what do media do with people? "We are no longer concerned with individual media, but with the increasing spread of media, some of which are no longer even recognizable as such," explains Prof. Dr. Carolin Gerlitz. The media scientist has been the spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Center since 2024, which was launched at the University of Siegen in 2016. The university has an almost 40-year tradition in media studies. In earlier CRCs, the researchers dealt with "screen media" and then with "media upheavals".
Cooperation media
"In our digitalized world, however, we can no longer just focus on television, film or PCs. Media of cooperation are created through interaction and enable interaction. This is an interplay. That's why we look at both the emergence of media and what they make possible," says Carolin Gerlitz. In the first funding phase, the CRC's projects focused on the infrastructures that underpin media and critically examined the promise of participation offered by social media platforms. In the second funding phase, more attention was paid to the role of data and data practices as part of media cooperation. In the third funding phase, the focus is now on cooperation in the context of artificial intelligence and sensory media. "Sensory media have the ability to constantly record their surroundings," explains Carolin Gerlitz. Sensors register light conditions, record sounds or movements, measure speeds, temperatures or vital data. This smart technology includes voice assistants such as Alexa or Echo Dot, with which people actively interact, but also media that you no longer even notice. This is known as the Internet of Things, i.e. digital infrastructures that collect data in the background without people noticing.
All of these sensory media are characterized by the fact that they connect with environments. There is hardly an area of life that is not affected: health, care, fitness, the "smart" home, the "intelligent" car or e-bike and also the question: how much smartphone is acceptable - especially for children? The CRC's projects also deal with the use of sensors and media practices in agriculture and military conflicts. "Media are embedded in the world. We can only consider them in practices and not detached from them," summarizes Carolin Gerlitz. With sensory media, artificial intelligence (AI) is also increasingly becoming the focus of the Siegen Collaborative Research Centre: "Because with media that constantly record the environment, that are interconnected, it is AI that evaluates the sensor data, recognizes the patterns in it and offers decision-making aids."
Sensemaking
So we perceive the world both through our own senses and through the data produced by the media. Scientists call this sensemaking. "We are interested in how technical sensemaking through AI is intertwined with human sensemaking and how the perception of the world is achieved together with media," explains Carolin Gerlitz. The researchers refer to the observation of human interaction with technologies as sensory praxeology. But who sets the direction in the interaction between humans and machines? "When we talk about cooperation, it is often assumed that all actors act symmetrically and can shape the situation equally. We, on the other hand, say that the relationship between actors can be very different. Human actors strongly determine the situation, but there are also situations where a lot is recorded, outsourced and decided by AI," says the SFB spokesperson. The researchers at the Siegen CRC are interested in asking the following questions, depending on the field of research: Who determines the situation and how? Who has what decision-making and design options? Where is this restricted and where does it become problematic?
Carolin Gerlitz and the researchers at the SFB are closely observing and monitoring the public debate on the power of the media: "We are aware of concerns. But in order to understand where and at what point too much power is perhaps being handed over to technology, we need to understand the processes. We address social fears, but by differentiating how the interaction between people and media takes place." In its projects, the SFB is very close to people's everyday lives. The claim to work "praxeologically" also plays a decisive role here. "Our research is based on collaboration with those who are being researched," explains Carolin Gerlitz. Whether it's about the use of smartphones in families, digital platforms for older people or sensors and apps for cyclists. "We not only communicate finished results to the public, but also conduct research with different publics."
Various disciplines are involved in the CRC "Media of Cooperation", such as media studies, sociology, ethnology, linguistics, ubiquitous computing, science and technology studies, as well as computer science, education, law and engineering. They all contribute to this overall project and bring their specific perspectives to the table. "We are united by our interest in contemporary digital research. That is the foundation of this collaboration," emphasizes Carolin Gerlitz. The CRC "Media of Cooperation" is in its third phase of funding. "But of course we know that our topics are never fully explored. The next perspectives will open up over the next four years," Carolin Gerlitz is certain.