Public Communication as Facilitated by the Media from the 1950’s to the 1970’s

Since the beginning of 2008, after the completion of the project on the history of the NWDR, the “Forschungsstelle Geschichte des Rundfunks in Norddeutschland” (FGRN) – the Research Centre for the History of Broadcasting in Northern Germany, the Hans Bredow Institute's cooperative project with the NDR (North German Broadcasting), the University of Hamburg (Department of Languages, Literature and Media I) and the WDR (West German Broadcasting) – has devoted itself to selected questions of public communication facilitated by the media, focussing mainly on the 1950's to the 1970's and with a particular emphasis on programme offerings from NDR.

Currently, three particular issues are being addressed:

• Long-term effects of media: central to this is how media users deal with changing programme offerings by public broadcasting. What is at question in the research is the formation of regional, national and European identity as facilitated by the media.
• The role of public broadcasters as central parties in public communication: the particular question posed here is the role they play in connection with a culture of remembering facilitated by the media, especially in connection to issues of the Nazi past and the process of coming to terms with it.
• Research on the North and West German Broadcasting Association (NWRV): the aim of this preparatory work is to enable a study on the basis of the methods of business history, which analyses the NWRV as an umbrella organisation spanning the joint television work of the NDR and the WDR between 1956 and 1961.