Royster Global Conference Schedule

(7:30 pm – 10:00 pm)

Hotel Krone Vinothek

Uhlandstraße 1

Dinner provided; alcoholic beverages paid individually.

(8:30 am – 9:30 am)

Alte Aula

Coffee and pastries provided

(9:30 am – 11:30 am)

Alte Aula

• Laura Pratt, Fellowship Programs Coordinator, UNC-CH
• Dr. Tori Ekstrand, Royster Distinguished Professor and Associate Professor, UNC-CH

(11:30 am – 1:30 pm)

(1:30 pm – 3:00 pm)

Alte Aula

• Dr. Tori Ekstrand, Royster Distinguished Professor and Associate Professor, UNC-CH
• Dr. Guido Zurstiege, Chair of Empirical Media Research, Institute for Media Studies, University of Tübingen

(3:00 pm – 3:30 pm)

(3:30 pm – 5:00 pm)

Alte Aula

(8:30 am – 10:00 am)

Alte Aula

Professor of Media Studies, University of Tübingen

“Digital Fever. Taming the Big Business of Disinformation”

Terror warnings, fake news, spectacles, and scandals in real-time – the networked world has wound itself up into a nervous frenzy, where everything has become visible: the banal and the terrible, the uninhibited abuse and the anonymous attack.

Bernhard Pörksen analyses in his lecture the patterns of outrage and agitation that have come to define social media and the internet. He argues that the intelligent use of information must become part of the general education provided by schools: the digital society must be transformed into an editorial one.

(10:00 am – 2:00 pm)

Attendees will pay for their own lunch on site or bring their own meal.

(2:00 pm – 3:30 pm)

(3:30 pm – 5:00 pm)

Alte Aula

Professor of Empirical Cultural Studies, University of Tübingen

“‘Compose Truth’: Digital Curation and Emotional Truth-Making in the Age of Social Media”

On Donald Trump’s social media platform “Truth Social,” which functions very similarly to the better-known Twitter, a tweet is called a “truth.” Consistently, the editing window for creating a post is titled with the headline “compose truth.” This invitation to compose one’s own truth(s) on social media might appear bizarre (or at least ironic) to many, but it also meaningfully reflects broader shifts in digital everyday cultures. While my presentation will not go into detail on the “Truth Social” platform (as a German user I am still blocked from using it), I will take the notion of “composing truth(s)” as a starting point for reflecting upon the role of digital curation as a practice of emotional truth-making in the age of social media.

From the perspective of digital anthropology, digital curation is a set of practices that includes the creating, selecting, collecting, editing, contextualizing, displaying, sharing, and circulating of digital content. Social media platforms have become key infrastructures to afford practices of digital curation for millions of users worldwide. In contrast to other analytical approaches that see digital curation on social media platforms primarily as a way of self-representation, I propose to think of digital curation as a contemporary form of truth-making. As such, the purpose of digital curation is not merely to convey information.

Digital curation also mobilizes and shapes emotions. Based on the anthropology of emotions and concepts of emotional/affective practices, I will argue that there is no clear distinction to be made between “knowing” and “feeling” the truth (at least from an anthropological perspective). The question of “disinformation,” then, is not simply the question of how facts are manipulated, but the question of how knowledge is curated in a way that it feels true.

I will give three brief examples for the digital curation as emotional truth-making that link to some of my ongoing multi-researcher projects and seminars: 1) (right-wing) populism, 2) Holocaust memory, 3) the Russian war on Ukraine. Throughout these examples, we witness shifting curatorial authorities: instead of established institutions, individual actors and everyday people gain influence in the making of truths.

At the same time, increasingly complex algorithms (sometimes based on machine learning) become more and more powerful. In conclusion, I will ask what consequences the rise of digital curation and its connected forms of truth-making have for the communication of research in contemporary societies. What role do we as researchers play in a world where anyone can “compose truth”?

(5:00 pm – 7:00 pm)

(7:00 pm – 10:00 pm)

Freistil Brauwerk – Neckar terrace

Wöhrdstraße 25

Dinner and beer tasting provided. Additional alcoholic beverages available for purchase.

(8:30 am – 10:00 am)

Alte Aula

Student participants present their own research.

• 8:30-8:45 – Kierra Peak (UNC) “Contextualizing Research: The Effect Events Have on Health”
• 8:50-9:05 – Sandip Kana (KCL) “Anxieties of Empire in the Digital Age”
• 9:10-9:25 – Nicole Antes (Tübingen) “The Effects of Metainformation About the Truthfulness of Information on Scene Memory”
• 9:30-9:45 – Chris Lane (UNC) “Racial Disparities in Physical Therapy Utilization among Fully Insured Older Adults with Rheumatoid Arthritis”

(10:00 am – 10:30 am)

(10:30 am – 12:00 pm)

Alte Aula

Dr. Susanne Marschall, Professor of Media Studies, Director of the Center for Media Competence, University of Tübingen

Dr. Erwin Feyersinger, Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Media Studies, University of Tübingen

“1001 Representations of a Virus: Visual Framings of the Pandemic”

Public discourses on the COVID-19 pandemic have been strongly framed by various visual representations of the virus. One of the most prominent and influential visualizations was created in January 2020 by Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgins, two medical illustrators of the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). The photorealistic image with a shallow focus and a red and grey color palette in front of an abstract white background became omnipresent in newspapers, on television, and on the Internet.

In addition to this common visualization, a wide range of image types and styles can be observed in the depictions of the virus. In our talk, we will examine common visual features in these representations, the image traditions that shape them, and the connotations that they evoke in the specific contexts they are used in. The talk is part of a larger research project that aims at understanding the essential impact of visual literacy in science communication.

(12:00 pm – 2:00 pm)

(2:00 pm – 3:30 pm)

Alte Aula

Edgar Thomas Cato Distinguished Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media; and

Principal Researcher, UNC Center for Information Technology and Public Life

“What Researchers Must Do Differently at a Time of Threats to Democracies”

This talk outlines the need for new conceptual and methodological approaches to social scientific communication research at a time of threats to democracies around the world. Normatively, I argue that researchers should center and defend democratic processes and institutions in their work and clearly analyze threats to them. Conceptually and empirically, researchers should a) move from studying polarization to analyzing status threats; b) center analysis of power and interest; c) analyze media and communication in relation to political institutions; d) develop comparative cases; and, e) move from analysis of individuals to a political analysis of groups.

(3:30 pm – 3:45 pm)

(3:45 pm – 4:45 pm)

Alte Aula

Kierra Peak (UNC) will facilitate a discussion to help identify opportunities for collaboration among the student participants.

(5:00 pm – 6:00 pm)

(9:00 am – 10:45 am)

Fürstenzimmer,

Schloss Hohentübingen

Student participants present their own research.

• 9:00-9:15 – ken tianyuan Ge (UNC) “That Funny Feeling: Climate Dysphoria, Peripheral Affect, and Subjective-Objective Interplay in U.S. Music Videos”
• 9:20-9:35 – Nina Altmaier (Tübingen) “Communicating Presence with Online Participants”
• 9:40-9:55 – Vignesh Kadasamy (KCL) “Disinformation and Social Media: Abrogation of Article 370 as a Case Study”
• 10:00-10:15 – Mandy Badermann (Tübingen) “Machine Learning”
• 10:20-10:35 – Jamshaid Shahir (UNC) “How to Heal a Broken Heart: An Overview of Stem Cell Therapeutics”

(10:45 am – 11:00 am)

(11:00 am – 12:30 pm)

Fürstenzimmer,

Schloss Hohentübingen

• 11:00-11:30 – Josh Miller (UNC) will facilitate a discussion on “Communicating Research and Engaging Audiences in the Digital Age”
• 11:45-12:15 – Aashka Dave (UNC) will lead a workshop on “When Challenging Research Hits Home: Mental Health Care in the Academy”

(12:30 pm – 2:00 pm)

(2:00 pm – 3:30 pm)

Fürstenzimmer,

Schloss Hohentübingen

Professor, Director of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Medical Hospital Tübingen

“Digital Media in the Prevention and Treatment of Target Groups in Medicine”

I will highlight two areas in medicine: a) on the one hand, I will describe how the dramatic increase in childhood and adolescent obesity can be countered through the use of serious games, also in the context of the Covid- pandemic, b) as a further example of application, I will describe the use of a short film for the psychoeducation of post-traumatic disorders for target groups of war and forced displacement.

What both approaches have in common is that we try to use digital media to make target group-specific offers that are low in barriers and can possibly be effective beyond local and regional use. In addition to the accessibility of the media, it is important for us to verify the effectiveness of the interventions. We use this to systematically re-evaluate and further develop our interventions.

(3:30 pm – 4:00 pm)

(4:00 pm – 4:45 pm)

Fürstenzimmer,

Schloss Hohentübingen

Students and faculty will further discuss opportunities for collaboration among institutions over the next year.

(5:00 pm – 6:30 pm)

(9:00 am – 10:00 am)

(10:00 am – 12:00 pm)

Fürstenzimmer,

Schloss Hohentübingen

• 10:00-10:45 – Monica Brana (Tübingen) will lead a workshop on “Navigating the Path Between Multi-Crisis Communication and Good Intentions Going Wrong”
• 11:00-11:45 – Sam Eiffert (UNC) will lead a workshop on “Risky Business: Communicating Results from Post-Market Vaccine Safety Studies”

(12:00 pm – 2:00 pm)

(2:00 pm – 3:30 pm)

Fürstenzimmer,

Schloss Hohentübingen

Participants will network and connect with researchers and resources from the University of Tübingen. Topics to be covered include:

1. working in higher education internationally and in Germany;
2. Teach@Tübingen and other funding in Germany and/or Europe for postdocs or recent graduates; and
3. support for PhD students and junior researchers

Dr. Sonja Großmann, Division II.2 Research Support

Dr. Britta Hoyer, Division II.1.3 Graduate Academy

(3:30 pm – 5:00 pm)

Fürstenzimmer,

Schloss Hohentübingen

Students and faculty will further discuss opportunities for collaboration across institutions over the next year.

(5:00 pm – 6:00 pm)

(6:00 pm – 7:00 pm)

(7:30 pm – 10:00 pm)

Historische Weinstube Forelle

Kronenstraße 8

Dinner provided; alcoholic beverages paid individually.