Second Summer School

Our second Summer School took place on the 22-25 September 2019. The four-day event included diverse thematic panels, round table discussions, specific trainings and workshops and was dedicated to “Populism in European Societies – Repercussions in the Media”.

The Summer School started with a lecture on “Growing populist tendencies in Eastern Europe” by Professor Gert Pickel, sociologist at the theological faculty at the University of Leipzig and EEGA steering committee member. The second lecture by Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt, sociologist at the Hans Bredow-Institute in Hamburg and expert on online-communication, dealt with the question as to how digital media affects public opinion.

In the first two panels on “Communicating Science” and “Reaching Diverse Audiences” different academics and journalists presented their work and spoke about new formats of science communication. Chief editor Tamina Kutscher for example presented her online project “Dekoder,” founded in 2015, a cooperation project for journalists and academics. In the following discussion, differences between academic and journalistic work were debated.

The third panel concentrated on “Freedom of the Media” starting off with Hungarian journalist Krisztian Simon presenting results of his dissertation on “The use of foreign grants in the independent newsrooms of Russia and Hungary”. In the following presentation, Pakistani journalist Farhan Janjua talked about his work experience as a journalist covering human rights and topics like digital rights, privacy and intersectional queer topics.

This year’s Summer School program also included diverse Media trainings. Volker Hahn (iDiv Leipzig) thought the participants how to present themselves and their science in an interview and other situations and what to consider when dealing with journalists. Insa van den Berg, a Leipzig based freelance journalist and coach, focused more on how to write press releases the right way and what to remember when organizing a press conference.

During the four-day event we deepened the dialogue of science and media of last year’s summer School.

Read the conference report on our second Summer School by Gemma Pörzgen here.

Some impressions of the event.