The Institute's annual report 2020-2022 shows how the Institute has successfully fulfilled its mission of conducting research on socially relevant communication and making the results available to society in the three years of Corona from 2020 to 2022.
You can download the pdf here [13,6 MB]
From the Preface "Change and Growth in the Corona Years".
Today, you can once again meet many friendly faces of colleagues from all areas when walking through the Institute, while others are still mainly encountered in zoom windows. The pandemic has - as elsewhere - fundamentally changed the forms of work at the Institute and thrown plans out of kilter. As a small independent institute, the HBI had to navigate the COVID crisis largely on its own, and at times it was closed. Some of the new Bredows were therefore able to meet the old Bredows in person for the first time at the closed meeting in 2022, which heralded the return to a new normality for the Institute.
There are a few of these new Bredows; the Institute is growing with its tasks. Other significant changes were simply due to the times. In October 2021, long-time director Uwe Hasebrink retired. The form of his farewell was more in keeping with his character than his role for the Institute and the subject: there was no big celebration and no big words. The fact that we have put up a bench in the garden where you can sit down thoughtfully and on which is written "What would Uwe do?" probably says a lot about his importance for the HBI. He determined the development of the institute for decades - clever, forward-looking, cooperative and empathetic - and could therefore retire with the good feeling of having established an institution.
The successor to his professorship - which the HBI established jointly with Universität Hamburg - took office in February 2023, much to our delight: Judith Möller. We have succeeded in gaining a colleague for us who, with the University of Amsterdam, was able to be lured away by an extremely strong research institution. Judith Möller's research is a perfect fit for the HBI. She also contributes her experience of cooperation with computer science, which is becoming increasingly important for our research. The Institute has significantly expanded its cooperation with this field. For example, a Media Research Methods Lab (MRML) was established within the institute, which bundles the methodological expertise of the HBI in an organisational unit that places a special focus on linking established social science methods with new types of digital procedures. In addition, we are working with colleagues from the Department of Computer Science at Universität Hamburg on several projects that will help us to understand the socio-technical ecosystems in which communication takes place today.
In view of the tasks ahead of us, we will probably be sitting on the "Uwe bench" a lot in the future. Because we have a lot planned. The Institute has applied for a strategic expansion in 2022, the assessment of which will take place in 2023 and 2024. This expansion also aims to go beyond individual media to cover the socio-technical environment and to establish the necessary competences and procedures for this at the Institute, and should enable the more flexible transfer of knowledge. The Institute is very grateful to the Ministry of Science, Research, Equality and Districts of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the members of the Board of Trustees and the Scientific Advisory Board for their support also in developing the concept for the strategic expansion.
In addition to these major strategic developments, the Institute fulfilled its mission of conducting research on socially relevant communication and making the findings available to society during the reporting period. More about this in this report.
Wolfgang Schulz, June 2023
