Due to a serious illness I have not been active on the blog for a very long time. Luckily I feel much better now and I’ve already started working again a while ago. It is wonderful to be back at the Institute of Journalism and Communication Research in Hanover (IJK) and a lot has happened here, not only in terms of staff. Sadly, a few longtime and dear colleagues have moved on in the meantime to new exciting jobs or – also new and exciting I guess – retirement. I did not have the chance to say goodbye in person but I wish them all the best. Still, I miss you. However, I have gained a number of young colleagues, which is very refreshing. The teamspirit is like no other here, and hopefully that will never change.
I am also pleased that I was involved in the recruitment of two very intersting and important projects, which were approved during my absense and that can now really kick off. Both projects deserve an extensive description here on the blog, but for now I will give you just a little teaser:
The first is the „Coding With the Crowd“ project, which I was able to acquire together with Anja Dittrich. In the project we will shed light on the coding process of standard content analysis using crowdworkers as coders. The project is sponsored by DGOF research funding. I am already looking forward to the implementation of this small but fine method study.
Secondly, the Institute received funding from the Ministry of Education and Research of Lower Saxony for the introduction of computational methods into research and teaching at IJK. This project will run for three years and aims to make the transition to a new methodology as gentle as possible. We are planning dialogues with practitioners and scientists, advanced method training for the staff and best practice courses for the curricullum of all study tracks. I am implementing the „Communication Data Science“ project together with my colleague Jule Scheper. I really apreciate the chance to be able to think long-term and fundamentally about this challenge. I am pleased about the opportunity to extend and deepen the well-founded methodological training here at the institute with my work.
That’s it for today. I will soon report more about both projects.