Welcome to the Department of Communication (IfK) at the University of Münster.

Prof Dr Thorsten Quandt has been awarded a 2.5 million euro ‘ERC Advanced Grant’ by the European Research Council (ERC). Over the next five years, he will use this funding to research how certain online communities, which are primarily made up of young men, become dangerous environments. In a two-stage selection process with over 2,500 applications from all disciplines, a total of 281 researchers have now been awarded one of the coveted Advanced Grants, including 35 from Germany.

This year's annual conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) is focusing on ‘Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research’ and will take place from 12-16 June in Denver, Colorado, USA. Researchers from the IfK Münster will also be represented at the internationally relevant conference, which brings together communication researchers from all over the world to discuss current specialist topics.

The new fellow at the Centre for Research on Digital Public Spheres has come to Münsterland from the United States: Prof. Dr. Seth Lewis from the University of Oregon (USA) is currently visiting the IfK.

Social media, artificial intelligence and misleading or deliberately false information (‘fake news’) are playing an increasingly important role in public discussions on polarising topics such as climate change and vaccinations. Prof. Dr. Julia Metag will join the newly established Hot Science Communication Lab to investigate how controversial scientific topics are presented and disseminated online in text, images and sound, how this multimodal mix influences opinions on scientific topics, and what consequences this has for research communication. The Volkswagen Foundation is funding the project with €840,000 over four years as part of its Momentum – Funding for First Appointments initiative. Prof. Dr. Julia Metag is the first communication scientist to receive this funding.

The think tank for strategic communication has appointed Prof Dr Helena Stehle to its Scientific Advisory Board. The board is made up of the Academic Society's research partners and advises them and the Executive Board on research projects, knowledge development and transfer.