Teaching and research at the Chair of Communication Studies with a Focus on Communication Ethics is carried out in close collaboration with the other professorial chairs at the Department (Communication Studies and Organisational Communication).

Communication ethics issues are related to general communication studies and its theory and are relevant, for example, in media systems research and (media) organisational research.
In terms of content, teaching and research focuses on communication ethics during times of media transition. This includes a communication-historical look into the long-term change in the public sphere and media systems, as well as a look into the content of media communication and its quality, professional and mediating roles (in journalism, PR, advertising, journalism, blogging, influencing, etc.), rules (norms and underlying values) and the regulation of public communication (self- and co-regulation of the media).

The historical-systematic perspective helps us to understand why we can and should base public communication on certain values. Like freedom of communication, these have developed under certain social, economic and political circumstances and help determine the "control and reflection function" (B. Debatin) that communication and media ethics perform in society.

Inter-/transnational perspectives complement this orientation. The chair focuses its activities on Germany, France and Great Britain, as well as some references to research in Latin America. The approach is often comparative.

Teaching combines the theory of communication ethics with skills required for practical communication. This not only affects students' own communicative and media-related actions, and consequently their communication and media skills, but also provides them with skills for future careers in journalism, PR and other fields such as organisational communication, media regulation, or media education, as well as applied media and communication research.

Theories of media communication are equally important to our teaching and research as those of interpersonal communication. Interpersonal communication is central to the teaching of attitudes, opinions and values, even in a mediatised society. In both private and public communication, interpersonal communication no longer primarily takes place in a shared place and/or at the same time, but increasingly by means of social media and digital communication tools that delimit the relationships between time and space.

Questions of digital communication and media ethics, including AI ethics, pose new challenges for teaching and research and are addressed in teaching and research.

The research profile of the professorial chair is characterised by its bringing together of foci on communication ethics, communication theory and communication history on the basis of primarily qualitative communication research (individual research projects include standardised, e.g. content-analytical or survey-based procedures). Issues approached by intercultural and transcultural communication research are also combined with questions related to communication ethics.

The research projects as well as doctoral and habilitation projects bring together various fields of communication studies. They are linked by normative, competence-orientated perspectives and the question of the quality criteria of publicly relevant communication.

Prof. Dr Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz: project overview

Dr. habil. Anke Fiedler: Voices from the Periphery: (De-)Constructing and Contesting Public Narratives about Post-Industrial Marginalisation (VOICES)