Was haben Medien mit Extraktivismus zu tun? Welche ökologischen Katastrophen und sozialen Verwerfungen verursacht Extraktivismus? Und was können wir gegen die Ausbeutung ganzer Regionen für Medientechnologien tun? Diesen Fragen widmeten sich über 100 Teilnehmende auf der Spring School Medien:Extraktivismus vom 17.–19.4. 2026 in Bochum.

Im Rahmen der diesjährigen Spring School haben Studierende, Zivilgesellschaft und Wissenschaftler:innen über zweieinhalb Tage gemeinsam gearbeitet und Konflikte rund um das Thema Extraktivismus mithilfe kreativer Methoden wie Waterscaping, Collagen und Mapping erforscht. Neben lokalen Extraktionsorten und Geschichten des Ruhrgebietes wurden in diesem Jahr internationale Extraktionsregionen– und praktiken „über und unter Tage“ thematisiert. Verstanden als System der Ausbeutung, lässt Extraktivismus der Erde keine Reproduktionsmöglichkeiten und bringt soziale Verwerfungen und Konflikte bis hin zu Menschenrechtsverletzungen mit sich. Extraktivismus ist einer der größten Umgestalter der Erde durch Minen, aber auch durch extraktive Infrastrukturen. Extraktivismus ist zudem wesentlich für die Klimakatastrophe verantwortlich. Ein Fokus lag dabei auf den Entwicklungen im Bereich künstlichen Intelligenz, die in Zukunft die  Extraktionsfolgen massiv verschärfen werden.

Extraktivismus und KI

In den Beiträgen der internationalen Gäste ging es um fossile Brennstoffe, die das Ruhrgebiet noch heute prägen – aber auch um Mineralien und Erden für digitale Technologien. Neben seltenen Erden für Batterien, Chips und Co. standen auch Infrastrukturen für KI, etwa Datenzentren, im kritischen Fokus. Durch die Implementierung von KI-Bots sowie geopolitische Konflikte weltweit ist KI nicht nur gesellschaftlich, sondern auch ökologisch ein drängendes Thema. Der enorme Verbrauch von Wasser und Energie jener Datenzentren, die die Grundlage Künstlicher Intelligenz bilden, sowie die   umkämpften Mineralien, die zur Herstellung der benötigten Rechenchips notwenig sind, machen KI zu einem der am schnellsten wachsenden Ressourcenverbraucher weltweit.  Vortragende und Teilnehmende haben sowohl die Perspektive des globalen Extraktivismus als auch die lokalen Auwirkungen solcher Tech-Infrastruktren kritisch diskutiert. Datencenter, die massiv in den Wasserverbrauch eingreifen, sogenannte Click-Work-Arbeitszentren, in denen Content-Moderation, Data Labeling und andere niedrig bezahlten Tätigkeiten ausgeführt werden, werden oftmals in den Globalen Süden ausgelagert, sind aber auch in Deutschland und im Ruhrgebiet zu finden. Weltweit tragen sie zu den extraktiven Strukturen vor Ort bei. Postkoloniale und feministische Perspektiven auf Mining, Arbeit, Ressourcen und Sacrifice Zones sind daher unerlässliche Perspektive auf das Thema Extraktivismus durch KI Infrastruktur. 

Durch diese weitgefasste Perspektive auf die Praktiken des Extraktivismus konnten die vielen gesellschaftlichen Bereiche, die von den Folgen des Extartkvismus betroffen sind, in den Workshops miteinander verbunden werden. Die Medienwissenschaft wird durch diese klimagerecht und extraktivismuskritische Perspektive zudem auf ihre materiellen Grundlagen im Sinne der Mediengeologie des Theoretikers Jussi Parikkas zurückgeworfen (siehe auch Noam Gramlich Arbeiten hierzu). 

Das Programm

Den ersten Abend eröffneten eine Einführung in das Thema Extraktivismus und Medien sowie drei Keynotes und eine Podiumsdiskussion zu den Themen Revier Noir von Frederike Lange aus dem Deutschen Bergbaumuseum, Queerness im historischen Bergbau zwischen Ruhrgebiet und Oberschlesien der Bochumer Künstlerin Julia Nitzschke sowie zu Luft und Extraktivismus der Kulturwissenschaftlerin und Filmemacherin Marietta Kesting. In der anschließenden Podiumsdiskussion mit den Beitragenden, die der Medienwissenschaftler Oliver Leistert  moderierte, wurde der Fokus auf die Schäden gerichtet, die etwa Datenzentren verursachen, und darauf, wie sich lokale Bevölkerungen z.B. in den USA schon heute gegen diese wehren. 

Am zweiten Tag ging es hands on weiter mit praktischen Workshops zur Emscher von Natalie Pielok, zu Film und Klimakatastrophe von Matthias Grotkopp und Maike Reinerth, zu Waterscaping von Rémi Willemin und Alisa Kronberger und zu Infrastrukturen des Extraktivismus mit Petra Löffler, Marlene Helling und Jakob Claus. Deutlich wurde in vielen Beiträgen, dass Extraktivismus Ewigkeitskosten mit sich bringt, die auch im Ruhrgebiet immer noch aufwändige Lösungen erfordern, wie etwa die Entsorgung toxischer Förderreste oder das auf Dauer angelegte Abpumpen von Wasser aus ehemaligen Steinkohlegruben. 

Neben wissenschaftlichen Inputs standen auch künstlerische Auseinandersetzungen im Zentrum, etwa in der Lecture Performance von Azadeh Ganjeh zu Goldextraktivimus und den damit verbundenen sozialen Konflikten sowie politischen (Online-)Protesten im Iran. Eine Fotoausstellung in der Quartiershalle von Sara Bahadori sensibilisierte die Teilnehmenden für Ausschlüsse und Marginalisierungen innerhalb der Klimabewegung. In einem Workshop zum weißen Blick auf das Klima wurde das Thema von der Referentin nochmals kritisch und reflexiv vertieft. 

Eindrücke der Spring School

Rund 100 Teilnehmende haben aktiv an Workshops zu Wasser, KI und Bergbaugeschichte sowie an einem dekolonialen Stadtrundgang in Bochum – geleitet von Marie Sprenger und Florian Trompke – teilgenommen.   Abschließend  entwickelten Lehrende und Studierende in einem Workshop zu klimagerechter Lehre am Sonntagmorgen Inhalte und Methoden für ein zukünftiges hochschulübergreifendes Curriculum zum Thema.

Die Spring School ist eine Veranstaltung des Projekts „Öffentlichkeit“ im SFB Medien der Kooperation und stellt eine Öffentlichkeit aus Künstler:innen, Wissenschaftler:innen und Journalist:innen sowie engagierter Zivilgesellschaft rund um das Konfliktthema Klimakatastrophe her. 

Die dritte Spring School des Arbeitskreises MediaClimateJustice wurde organisiert von Julia Bee, Gerko Egert, Alisa Kronberger und Julia Reinermann und wurde unter anderem durch die Förderung des SFB Medien der Kooperation und der Ruhr-Universität Bochum realisiert. Ziel der Spring Schools zu Medien und Klima ist das Thema Klima stärker in der Medienwissenschaft und der Gesellschaft zu verankern. 

The two-day online conference and data sprint “Witnessing and Justice in Data-Based Research” took place on 31 March and 1 April 2026, bringing together scholars, archivists, journalists and civil society actors, among them war crime documentors and OSINT communities. Organised as part of an ongoing collaboration between the “War Sensing” project (European University Viadrina/CRC “Media of Cooperation”), the Telegram Archive of the War (Center for Urban History, Lviv), and the School of Communications/Conflict Institute (Dublin City University), the event reflected upon the practices and limits of war-related research based on digital, archived and other types of data.

The urgent question at the center of the event was how to address the ongoing tension between data-based research of war and the injustices that persist. Despite the large volume of data documenting Russia’s war in Ukraine, the destruction and attacks against Ukraine continue. Despite the limits of research, OSINT, investigative journalism, and other interventions, data-based investigations using “data for the good” (cf. Williams, 2022; Kazansky et al., 2019) can form a small part of achieving transitional justice and maintain hope and demand accountability by using digitally derived evidence of war injustices and crimes.

DAY 1, 31.03.2026

Lessons from an emergency archive: Telegram Archive of the War 

The conference was opened on the morning of 31 March with a public keynote lecture by Oksana Avramenko (Center for Urban History, Lviv), moderated by Prof. Dr. Tanya Lokot (Dublin City University). Titled “Granting Access to War: Ethics and Accountability in the TG Archive”, Avramenko’s talk addressed the ethical implications of making Telegram data in the war context accessible for research through the Telegram Archive of the War (TG Archive) while safeguarding sensitive personal data of civilian war witnesses.

A central concern was the extensive scope of personal data involved: the archive currently holds approximately two million user IDs, necessitating a tiered classification system that distinguishes between moderately sensitive, sensitive, and highly sensitive content. This framework reflects the serious responsibility the Archive carries toward the civilians whose data has been preserved. Oksana Avramenko also drew attention to findings from CRESE research, which indicate that Telegram-sourced material has been used in only 0.002% of cases before the International Criminal Court, raising important questions about the gap between the volume of documentation being preserved and its current utility in formal accountability processes. Insights during the discussion addressed what the team of the TG Archive would have done differently if the circumstances had allowed: Due to wartime and platform-based conditions, the Archive could not meet the conventional standard of informed consent, such as contacting channel administrators before archiving their content. Oksana Avramenko framed this as a fundamental tension between the imperative to preserve a historic record and the lived reality of those still experiencing the war being documented. 

Imaginations of War Witnessing

The keynote was followed by the roundtable “Limits of War Witnessing”, moderated by Prof. Dr. Miglė Bareikytė (European University Viadrina). During the talk, five practitioners working across investigative and data journalism, film and memory studies – Jelnar Ahmad (Syrian Archive Programme Manager at Mnemonic), Karina Buhaichenko (investigative journalist at Slidstvo.info), Yevheniia Drozdova (data journalist at Texty.org.ua), Oleksiy Radynski (filmmaker and co-founder of Kinotron Group), and Bohdan Shumylovych (Associate professor at Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv) – discussed the experiential and political limitations of digital war witnessing contributors.

Jelnar Ahmad, representing the Syrian Archive, emphasized the complementary nature of digital documentation, where each collected source represents only a piece of the larger puzzle, raising questions about whether all perspectives are captured, and what consent means in contexts where safety concerns, such as the need to withhold geocoordinates, preclude direct engagement with witnesses. Karina Buhaichenko from the investigative outlet Slidstvo.info drew attention to the politics of visibility, arguing that systematic violence is often the least visible, and explored the tensions between documenting and protecting, as well as between maintaining public attention and the moral exhaustion that comes when witnessing becomes routine. Yevheniia Drozdova from Texty.org.ua noted that despite this being one of the best-documented wars in history, justice has not followed, in part because data journalism operates in a severely constrained environment where security considerations keep many registers closed. She advocated for publishing findings based on transparent estimation instead of silence and called for greater collaboration between organisations whose work or topics frequently overlap. Oleksiy Radynski (co-founder of Kinotron Group), spoke about working with the same body of data as his fellow contributors but repurposing it to research nuclear terror and occupation by making sense of thousands of hours of CCTV footage. He argued that unedited, uninterrupted raw material best exposes what he called “the everyday banality of the Russian war machine”, and that filmmaking in this context becomes an innovative form of resistance. Bohdan Shumylovych (Ukrainian Catholic University) presented a non-conventional approach to war documentation through the collection of dreams, drawing on the concept of “egodocuments” to argue that personal narratives are intimately connected to time, temporality, and social tension; he also reflected on the possibilities and dangers of feeding such material into AI systems, where lived experience risks becoming sensationalized.

The subsequent discussion explored the productive opacity of certain documentation practices, such as deliberate choices about safety and not fully disclosing collected material, the cross-contextual connections between the Syrian and Ukrainian cases, and the question of timeliness, when investigations can generate public discussion even if structural change remains slow. Participants also reflected on the different scales of public engagement and the role citizens play as active participants in the larger witnessing process.

Researching War through Telegram Data: Summary of the data sprint 

The first conference day concluded with a half-day data sprint in the afternoon of 31 March, during which participants from the previous data sprint „War Sensing Through The Telegram Archive of The War“ in September 2025 discussed their ongoing engagement with the Telegram Archive’s data. 

The data sprint session revisited key questions appearing since the last data sprint, including the outcomes and continuation of the research collaborations, their future plans, the role of the Telegram Archive of the War, and the related ethical and practical challenges encountered during the research process. Facilitated by Johanna Hiebl (European University Viadrina) and Oksana Avramenko (Center for Urban History, Lviv), the session featured presentations by three groups. 

Group 1 (Trustworthiness of OSI(NT) Outputs) 

Group 1 centred on the challenge of distinguishing between different types of open-source intelligence outputs, namely OSINT, OSINV, OSINF, and Grey OSINT and how they appear specifically in the context of Telegram as a platform and the TG Archive as a research resource. 

A key conceptual move in this group project was reframing OSINT as a process rather than a product or entity, which complicated the classification of Telegram posts such as satire or purely descriptive posts, and foregrounded the importance of localised, contextual knowledge during the ongoing war. Military slang such as „mangal”, which is a term used for a  makeshift protective structure fitted to tanks (as well as a portable grill), illustrate how much understanding can hinge on terms that are invisible to keyword-based search. Here the group throughout their research process noted that not everyone possesses the linguistic and contextual competencies required to conduct, but also assess OSINT content responsibly. As a side project, the project group started mapping the OSINT landscape and its community vernacular on Telegram to address the persistent challenge of contextual knowledge during war. 

The group also grappled with the platform’s technical specificities within their own research process, including the distinction between archived comments, the differentiation between public channels and private chats and the need for desktop access to be able to fully evaluate a message. A recurring theme was the insufficiency of open-source digitally derived evidence isolated from Telegram, highlighting the need for cross-referencing and corroboration with other sources. Looking ahead, the group is working towards a renewed version of the Amsterdam Matrix for classifying OSINT outputs with a focus on Telegram during Russia’s war against Ukraine. There are also ideas to integrate the new framework into the TG Archive interface to guide future users in assessing the trustworthiness of OSI(NT) outputs. 

Group 2 (Sabotage on Telegram) 

Group 2 analysed Telegram practices of grassroots sabotage groups in Russia’s war against Ukraine, choosing to focus on the concept of sabotage as resistance in the context of the war. They explore the representation and practices of sabotage actors through digital ethnographic data collection and qualitative content analysis of three pre-selected channels across two stages: the initial phase following the full-scale invasion (after 24.02.2022) and the established phase (after the liberation of Kherson). Using Google Sheets, the group documented their observation by recording only interpretations and selected phrases from TG Archive data, to minimise and essentially avoid sensitive data sharing with third party platforms, which forms the core of a collaborative paper. They require continuous access to the TG Archive and plan to present results at international conferences.  

Key challenges included the archive’s data limits (only until June 2023), leading the group to focus on early group establishment and key dates in the early stages of the war. Ethical constraints on exporting data were addressed through rich-text coding while avoiding sensitive details. The limits of the translation tool that is embedded in the TG Archive and does not share the data with third party platforms were mitigated via double and triple coding, discussing metaphorical language (e.g., „going for a walk“ as a form of resistance/protest), and regular exchange meetings.

As the war is ongoing, the group anonymizes channel and group titles to avoid harming participants in occupied Ukrainian territories and in Russia involved in partisan activities. To prevent adversarial learning, for example through making strategic information on sabotage organization potentially available to Russian security services, the project team chose to describe groups in an abstract manner and their practices in general terms. Central questions in this research project included how sabotage actors describe their own actions, and the issue of research extractivism if/when getting in contact with investigated groups. Currently, the group is finalising their literature review and structuring analysis results.

Group 3 (Everyday War Witnessing: Witnessing the Outbreak of the War through Urban Chats) 

Group 3 examined how the outbreak of the full-scale invasion became witnessable through Telegram, focusing on urban chats from 24 February 2022. The group employs a methodology combining distant reading, by focusing on words that appear most common with close reading of the context for topic identification, followed by merging selected quotes and visualising them through colour-coded topics. The current aim of this research group is to test this methodology—checking for important missing elements—and to visualise topics of each chat separately.

Using the TG Archive as the data source for the project, messages, publication times, and chat names were collected from the archive and used for collaborative analysis, such as Google Collaboratory. Challenges include the subjectivity of defining topics, and decisions about visualisation methods. A data-related question the group faces is whether chat names should be published in the final work.

Outlook and Future for Working with the TG Archive

The data sprint session concluded with an outlook about future steps for working with the TG Archive. A central topic was developing clear citation guidelines, such as mentioning the Archive name, message ID, channel/chat ID, timestamp and guidelines on how to seed the archive, the ethical handling of anonymised data, and proper visualisation practices. Questions regarding the further development of the TG Archive revolved around quotes creation and management for collaborative work with CSV export and assigned tags, as well as the creation of a thematic collections registry on the website of the TG Archive that follows a transparent categorisation logic. 

Open ethical challenges addressed the technical feasibility of obtaining consent from channel administrators or participants due to the scale and urgency of data collection. Debates of the group discussion centered on obtaining consent after the fact, such as contacting channel administrators, which is potentially dependent on channel status following the “situational ethics” approach as advocated by the Association of Internet Researchers. Moreover, the usage of third party services, including LLMs, presents another ethical tension, as the current user agreement prohibits the usage of such services, although local models that don’t share data might be ethically feasible. Additional questions included best practices for user agreements to mitigate data breaches and further consultation with other civil archiving initiatives such as the Syrian Archive. 

DAY 2, 01.04.2026

Justice through Digital Data

The second day started off with a public session in the afternoon of 1 April, beginning with the roundtable “Digital Justice and Accountability”, moderated by Johanna Hiebl (European University Viadrina). The roundtable started off with practitioner perspectives of Jenna Dolecek (OSINT for Ukraine) and Maryna Slobodyanuk (Truth Hounds), both of whom are involved in documenting and investigating war crimes during the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Their presentations were followed by Kaja Kowalczewska (Digital Justice Center, University of Wrocław/Queen’s University Belfast) who researches the role of civil society organisations in accountability processes, in particular on how digital data collected by CSOs can be responsibly transferred into prosecutorial and investigative contexts. 

Jenna Dolecek spoke from the perspective of rapid-response verification, noting that physical investigators typically arrive only after an attack has taken place, which means that digital evidence often precedes and shapes what is later examined on the ground. Yet despite this, none of the cases she presented have so far appeared in court. Rather than framing this as a failure, she approached it as a shared learning process across the field. Maryna Slobodyanuk observed that while the war is in many ways being recorded automatically, a significant gap persists between documentation and justice: the evidentiary requirements of court proceedings are stringent, the Ukrainian legal system is still adapting to the realities of digital evidence, and the data itself remains fragile and fragmented. She also flagged the ethical risks of relying on data derived from hacked or otherwise non-public sources as legal evidence, as well as the persistent practical challenge of accessing war crime scenes. Kaja Kowalczewska brought in a research perspective, arguing that digitalisation has prompted a democratisation of accountability processes by granting access to non-state actors who lack the institutional knowledge and resources of traditional investigative bodies. She emphasised that the key measure of success is not the volume of material collected, but whether the system as a whole can responsibly navigate that material into prosecutorial contexts. 

In the subsequent discussion, Kowalczewska stressed “the importance of coordination more than lack of civil journalism/data,” highlighting success stories of coordination architecture. The conversation also addressed the challenges of fake materials requiring extensive verification time, with AI framed not as black and white but as a tool supporting active human analysis. Questions from the audience raised the role that local communities can and should play in data-based investigations, pointing to an ongoing tension of visibility between centralised expertise and grassroots knowledge.

Capturing Cultural Resistance as Less Documented War Witnessing

The public conference programme concluded with a film screening of “A Home for Rita” (directed by Yulia Appen, 2025). The documentary film follows a Roma family that had to flee the Russian occupation in spring 2022, focusing in particular on the direct experiences of Roma women during the war, their stories and their playful imagination. Set in the city of Zaporizhzhia, just 40 kilometres from the frontline, the narrative centers around the housing problem for displaced Roma people, and their search for a home and a sense of belonging. At the same time, the movie documents the reflections of the Roma people on Ukraine and their own complex identity during the full-scale invasion and in the context of the resistance to Russian aggression.

The screening was followed by a Q&A with director Yulia Appen and Sashko Protyah from Freefilmers, moderated by Prof. Dr. Miglė Bareikytė. The director Appen answered questions from the audience, describing the process of establishing contact with the Roma families, as well as the ethical implications of her position as an external individual producing a documentary film about a marginalized community, her approach of continuously giving back to the community and especially supporting the family in relocating. 

A word of thanks from the organizers

The format of the online conference and data sprint around the Telegram Archive of the War once again provided a space to carry out hands-on data research and to discuss the intersection of different methodological approaches and ethical challenges, drawing on specific thematic and temporal contexts. Beyond the specific findings of each working group and roundtable contribution, this year’s programme highlighted the tension between the extensive documentation of the war, digital data-based witnessing and ongoing injustices through the ongoing attack on Ukraine. Participants emphasized that open-source digitally derived evidence from the TG Archive cannot stand alone, but requires cross-referencing and also effective coordination and collaboration efforts to ensure that those involved do not duplicate their work. In times of ongoing war in Ukraine and thus in Europe, where Russia’s continued bombardment makes travel to and from Ukraine — and thus collaborative research in a shared physical space — extremely difficult, this online format has proven a meaningful way to sustain research engagement with issues that are urgent for participants from both academia and different realms of practice. As organisers, we want to thank everyone who joined this year’s conference and data sprint for their continued collaboration, openness, and mutual support.

On behalf of the CRC Media of Cooperation and the project teams “War Sensing” (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) with Prof. Dr. Miglė Bareikytė, Johanna Hiebl and Gregor Wörl, the Telegram Archive of the War (Center for Urban History, Lviv) with Oksana Avramenko and Maryana Mazurak and School of Communications/Conflict Institute (Dublin City University) with Prof. Dr. Tanya Lokot

Über das Mercator Fellowship am SFB 1187

Um die wissenschaftliche Zusammenarbeit im Forschungsverbund zu stärken, vergibt der SFB 1187 Mercator Fellowships an herausragende Wissenschaftler*innen aus dem In- und Ausland. Mercator Fellows forschen für eine längere Zeit und enger Zusammenarbeit mit einem oder mehreren der am SFB 1187 beteiligten Teilprojekte zu Fragestellungen rund um digitaler, datenintensiver Medien. Zusammen mit den regulären Mitglieder verfolgen unsere Mercator Fellows das gemeinsame Ziel, interdisziplinäre Ansätze weiterzuentwickeln und das Forschungsprogramm des SFB mitzugestalten. Die Aufnahme dieser renommierten Forschenden stärkt nicht nur das internationale Netzwerk des SFB 1187, sondern fördert auch den Wissens- und Ideentransfer, der für die digitale Gegenwartsforschung am SFB von zentraler Bedeutung ist.

Das Mercator Fellowship ist ein Modul im Rahmen der Förderprogramme der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft und dient dazu, einen intensiven und langfristigen Forschungsaustausch zu ermöglichen.

Über die aktuellen Mercator Fellows

Dr. phil. Azadeh Ganjeh

Professur für Performative Künste im Sozialen

Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen, Ottersberg

Dr. Olga Gorinuova

Professor of Media Arts

Royal Holloway, University of London.

Prof.‘in Dr. Maija Hirvonen

Professor for German language, culture and translation

Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences | Language Studies | German

Tampere University, Finland

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Streeck

Department of Communication Studies, Moody College of Communication
University of Texas at Austin, USA

Prof. Dr. Christopher Salter

University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses

University Montreal

Über die Ausstellung

Die Ausstellung „WE ARE NOT CARPETS: I tell you my story” war vom 6. bis 31. Oktober 2025 im poool, dem Kulturprojektraum der Gruppe 3/55 e.V., in Siegen zu sehen. Die Ausstellung wurde von von Tahereh Aboofazeli (Universität zu Köln) und Arjang Omrani (Universität Gent) kruatoriert und vom Sonderforschungsbereich 1187 „Medien der Kooperation” der Universität Siegen aus Fördermitteln der Deutschenm Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – Projektnummer 262513311) organisiert.

Fünf Künstler:innen aus der Region Nord-Khorasan im Iran nahmen an der Ausstellung teil und erzählten in acht lebensgroße Teppiche von ihren ganz persönlichen Geschichten. Die ausgestellten Teppiche luden die Besucher:innen dazu ein, über die verborgenen Geschichten und kulturellen Zusammenhänge nachzudenken, die die Herstellung und Bedeutung von Teppichen geprägt haben. Die Ausstellung regte dazu an, sich mit der Marginalisierung und Ausbeutung der Weber:innen auseinanderzusetzen und beleuchtete die kolonialen und kapitalistischen Verflechtungen der Ausbeutung, die bis heute nachwirken.

Die ausgestellten Teppiche sind das Ergebnis des gemeinsamen Forschungsprojekts „Weaving Memories“ von Tahereh Aboofazeli (Universität zu Köln) und Arjang Omrani (Universität Gent). Zehn Kunstweber aus dieser Region haben am Projekt „Weaving Memories“ teilgenommen. Unter ihnen sind die fünf Kunstweber Masoumeh Zolfaghari, Asieh Davari, Saheb Jamal Rahimi, Taqan Beik Barzin und Zohreh Parvin, die an der Installation in Siegen mitgewirkt haben, wobei Zoleikha Davari zusätzliche Unterstützung bei der Stabilisierung der Webarbeiten leistete.

About the conference and data sprint (23.- 25.09.2025)

The three-day hybrid event “War Sensing Through the Telegram Archive of the War” consisted of two interconnected parts: a public conference and a semi-public data sprint. The conference brought together around 40 participants, whereas the subsequent semi-public data sprint convened a group of about 20 scholars from various disciplines such as media and communication studies, sociology, engineering, data science and history, as well as practitioners from archival institutions and non-governmental organisations, including human rights monitoring and OSINT groups. 

Rooted in the interdisciplinary focus of the CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation” with its praxeological approach to digital and data-based media, the conference and data sprint, co-organised by the “War Sensing” project (European University Viadrina and the CRC “Media of Cooperation”) and the Telegram Archive of the War (Center for Urban History in Lviv) opened up a framework for collaborative knowledge production addressing ethical challenges to work with archived social media data from multidisciplinary experiences. This event format is a continuation of the collaboration between the War Sensing project and the Center for Urban History and builds on the previous data sprint “Memory under Fire” with the Telegram Archive of the War (further: the Archive) organised in 2022 (see Bareikytė et al. 2024). In 2025, the collaboration continued the research on digital platform archives with contemporary questions, while addressing ethical implications of archiving user-generated content, and asking how to collaboratively work with ephemeral and fragile digital data.

As the ongoing Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is documented not only by institutions but also by civilians who record and share their experiences via digital platforms, Telegram plays a crucial role as a space for coordination, expression, information exchange, and collective sense-making (Nazaruk, 2022). The Archive, curated by the Center for Urban History in Lviv, thus captured a part of the digital dimension of the war. Since February 2022, the Center has been systematically archiving public Telegram channels related to the war, including those used for evacuation, OSINT, mutual aid, memes, infrastructures, or local reporting. The Archive, therefore, offered a unique basis for empirical, inventive and interpretive research into how war is experienced, represented and documented. 

Opening the conversation: Program summary of the events

The conference and data sprint was opened with an event on 22 September in Frankfurt (Oder) by Dr. Susanne Spahn (University of Passau), who presented her book “The Russia Network: How I became a Russia expert and why I can no longer be one today” [Das Russland-Netzwerk: Wie ich zur Russland-Versteherin wurde und warum ich es heute nicht mehr sein kann]. Moderated by Johanna Hiebl (European University Viadrina), the public event engaged a diverse audience of Frankfurt residents and university employees discussing the scale of Russia´s information influence in Germany. A specific focus was laid on how the so-called alternative media in Germany can be used as a mouthpiece for the propagandist narratives of the Russian regime or sabotage recruiting. 

On 23 September, the hybrid conference connected Frankfurt (Oder) and Lviv, with a keynote lecture by the event co-organiser Taras Nazaruk (Center for Urban History) about the context of establishment and curatorial ethics of the Telegram Archive of the War. Nazaruk outlined the ethical and contextual challenges of archiving digital communication from Telegram during the ongoing war. During the evening keynote sessions, Miglė Bareikytė (European University Viadrina) moderated a talk and discussion by Asia Bazdyrieva (University of Applied Arts Vienna) & Svitlana Matviyenko (Simon Fraser University) and a talk and discussion by Daria Hetmanova (Simon Fraser University). Bazdyrieva and Matviyenko outlined their notion of the “Labour of Witnessing” as an often invisible form of experience, examined through feminist and critical theory. They also reflected on how the environment exposes the complexities of war and makes them visible. The public conference concluded with a keynote talk by Daria Hetmanova, who presented her research into mechanisms and practices of detention and filtration on the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine with an aim to understand how these detentive environments reproduce and extend through temporal and spatial dimensions.

The public talks were complemented by three tutorials focusing on the practical implementations of doing research with/on Telegram: Sayyara Mammadova (Atlantic Council) presented hands-on insights on how to start investigative processes with Telegram. Kateryna Maikovska (University of Vienna) brought the group into reflective work about doing digital ethnography on Telegram. Guillén Torres Sepulveda (Berkeley Human Rights Center), in his tutorial presented how exposure to sensitive content is not neutral, but can cause emotional and ethical challenges. He also highlighted how the investigator’s own agency influences both the interpretation and practice of doing digital investigations.  

Exploring War Through Data: Summary of the Data Sprint

During the data sprint, we invited scholars, archivists, civic tech and OSINT communities, and civil society actors to work collaboratively with selected datasets from the Telegram Archive of the War. The data sprint participants explored curated datasets by joining one of the following pre-defined research projects: detention and filtration, sabotage, crowd witnessing (cf. Andén-Papadopoulos, 2013) and trustworthiness of OSINT outputs (cf. Digital Method Initiative, 2024). Data sprint is an intensive research method that brings participants from interdisciplinary backgrounds to collectively analyse (digital) data in one space for a limited amount of time. Drawing on the open, experimental ethos of hackathons and barcamps, they foster interdisciplinarity through shared space, hands-on-data methods, and collaborative knowledge production (Venturini, Munk & Meunier, 2016). 

Group 1: Mapping Infrastructures of Filtration through the Telegram Archive of the War

The primary objective of the first group was to identify patterns in how infrastructures of filtration unfold beyond formal governance, focusing on the preparation and normalisation of filtration and detention practices that were discursively supported from the first day of the full-scale invasion. As a subproject of “Occupation Watch” (a CIDER initiative), this project aimed to contextualise and critically examine records issued by the occupiers by analysing Telegram channel messages and comments from pro-Russian sources. 

The group work was guided by the following research question: How do public Telegram communications reflect and document the filtration practices of Russian occupation in Ukraine, such as detention sites, and how these practices evolved over time? One has to remark here that also civilians documented their lived experiences of this control and administrative changes through local resistance, but following a do-no-harm approach for individuals now living under occupation, this data could not be considered during the data sprint. This is why the focus for the analysis was placed on Telegram communication close to narratives of the Russian regime. 

The project group was searching the Telegram Archive within the whole archived period from 28.02.2022 to 31.12.2023 for the keyword of “filtration” in Russian and coding Telegram data directly in the interface of the Archive. This allowed for an analysis of both the conduct of Russian combatants (via posts) and the motivations of the pro-Russian individuals participating in discussions (via comments). The group could trace back how pro-Russian channels portrayed the construction of filtration practices as “cleansing” or “curing” Ukraine of Western influence. This discourse, reinforced by hateful speech and dehumanising narratives, shows how digital communication spaces contributed to the conceptual and psychological infrastructure of violence exposing a horrifying mentality that justified atrocities, war crimes and the war itself.

Group 2: Sabotage on Telegram

The second group aimed to understand how sabotage is narrated in Telegram, and how sabotage is an example of a contemporary form of destabilisation and, especially, resistance during war. Ukrainian citizens and other resistance groups repurposed the platform to organise and deliberate upon the acts of sabotage, demonstrating its role not only as a tool for oppression but also as a tool of resistance to occupation, giving insights into how opposition is organised and sustained under Russian occupation in eastern parts of Ukraine and within Russia itself. 

The group investigated the following research questions: “How do the sabotage groups establish their presence on Telegram: what are their vernacular practices?” and “How is sabotage as a practice and the positionality of the authors are defined and metaphorised?” 

Their work delved into how these channels define and represent sabotage, establish their digital identities, and communicate their objectives to their audiences. Specifically, the group’s qualitative approach of in-depth analysis of selected messages focused on understanding how specific sabotage channels established themselves, communicated this establishment, and what topics and activities they talked about in the first months of their establishment. The group narrowed the focus to three anti-Russian public channels and conducted three rounds of open coding on the selected initial posts, developing categories related to positionality, self-reference, framing of actions, functions and narratives of the posts. 

This qualitative approach aimed not for a total representation of the channels‘ activities but for a deeper understanding of the foundational narratives and operational framing of sabotage-focused Telegram channels and is planned to be further developed in a co-authored academic paper.

Group 3: It has begun. The first hours of the invasion: witnessing the outbreak of the war through urban chats

Telegram platform also served as a chronicle of the war’s impact on civilians, documenting their responses during the first hours of the invasion. The third research group focused on how the outbreak and first hours of Russia’s full-scale invasion were witnessed and experienced by residents of one city in the eastern part of Ukraine. By analysing public Telegram chats from February 24, 2022, the group investigated the immediate social and informational dynamics of a city under attack. The research questions were the following: “How did the outbreak of the full-scale invasion become witnessable through Telegram?” and “What practices does it allow one to analyse in the context of invasion based on its representation on Telegram?”. The group investigated approximately 7,000 messages from city-based chats using a combination of distant and close reading techniques. For distant reading, the group used web-based text analysis to identify high-frequency words. For close reading, each group member took several keywords for a qualitative analysis and contextualisation. Afterwards, thematic coding revealed the most frequent concerns among residents, including transportation, shelters, medical, telecom, and food supplies, shelling/explosion, civilian harm, among others. The analysis highlighted an overwhelming sense of confusion and uncertainty, as citizens sought answers to urgent, life-critical questions while adapting to rapidly changing conditions, including the access to crucial societal services, including pharmacies, or questions about the potential attacks on civilians by the Russian troops. Despite the chaos, the data also revealed a process of civilian adaptation even during this first day. By the end of the day, alongside persistent uncertainty, messages of gratitude began to appear, directed toward the Ukrainian army and service providers.

At the end of the datasprint the third project group expressed interest in critically assessing the efficacy of methodologies such as distant reading or developing a context-specific glossaries to better interpret the unique linguistic and cultural nuances that have transformed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

Group 4: Evaluation of the trustworthiness of OSINT outputs on Telegram 

This oscillation between confusion and coordination mirrors the broader messiness of the information flux during the war, but also beyond. As communication intensified on social media, a dramatic increase in user-generated content emerged, some of which aimed to clarify this messiness, while others aimed to enlarge the noise. These dynamics of social media, with increased access to publicly shared Open Source Information (OSINF), introduce the need to and challenges in assessing the trustworthiness and authenticity of publicly shared content. 

Building on the Amsterdam Matrix (Digital Methods Initiative, 2024), an analytical framework and its application handbook published by the members of OSINT for Ukraine (Hiebl et al., 2025), the fourth project group aimed to test the Amsterdam Matrix and adapt this framework to Telegram’s specific platform affordances, focusin on two questions: “Which elements of the Amsterdam Matrix are adaptable to Telegram’s architecture?” and “What new parameters should be added to assess OSINT credibility within Telegram’s ecosystem?”. 

By exploratory analysis and collaborative qualitative coding of a small sample dataset of OS(INT)-labelled Telegram messages, the group observed a notable variation in textual and thematic formats of outputs. This led to informed proposals for modifying or replacing certain parameters of the Amsterdam Matrix – originally developed on the basis of posts from Twitter/X – to better suit Telegram’s platform affordances. A significant challenge noted by the group was assessing the large volume of low-quality and difficult-to-verify content. As a related side project, the team also explored methods for verifying the integrity of data within the archive to certify if content was altered by computational methods.

These verification challenges exemplify how methodological concerns are inseparable from effective sense-making in a chaotic information environment. Looking forward, this project group anticipates developing educational materials based on these findings and integrating AI into investigative workflows to scale-up and strengthen verification efforts.

A word of thanks from the organisers

The format of the hybrid conference and data sprint around the Telegram Archive provided a space to carry out hands-on-data research, discuss the intersection of different approaches and ethical challenges by drawing on specific thematic and temporal contexts. Beyond the specific findings of each research group, the data sprint surfaced several overarching themes concerning ethical and methodological challenges that came up while collaboratively working with the digital data archived by the Telegram Archive of the War. Participants grappled with issues regarding the research ethics such as anonymisation/pseudonymisation of user data, how to write about distressing and sensitive content from Telegram for a public audience, and navigating further issues, such as ensuring that no harm is caused to data producers, discussing the functionality of the tool and its potential improvements, and the future direction of research.

In times of war in Ukraine and thus in Europe, when ongoing Russia‘ s bombardment a make collaborative travelling to/from Ukraine and thus research in one place difficult, this hybrid conference and data sprint was a meaningful way to continue to do research despite these circumstances and engage with war-related issues that are pressing for participants from academia and praxis. As organisers of the workshop, we want to thank everyone who joined this workshop for their mutual support and collaboration.

Project “War Sensing” (Prof. Dr. Miglė Bareikytė & Johanna Hiebl) and The Center for Urban History/”Telegram Archive of the War” (Taras Nazaruk)

Research on AI, Big Data Processing & Synthetic Media

The CRC “Media of Cooperation” launches its Critical Data School initiative at the University of Siegen with the international Autumn School “Synthetic Imaginaries: The Cultural Politics of Generative AI”.

→ Autumn School Programme 

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), big data processing, and synthetic media has profoundly reshaped how culture is produced, made sense of, and experienced today. To ‘synthesize’ is to assemble, collate, and compile, blending heterogeneous components into something new. Where there is synthesis, there is power at play. Synthetic media—as exemplified by the oddly prophetic early speech synthesizer demos—carry the logic of analog automation into digital cultures where human and algorithmic interventions converge. Much of the research in this area—spanning subjects as diverse as augmented reality, avatars, and deepfakes—has revolved around ideas of simulation, focusing on the manipulation of data and content people produce and consume. Meanwhile, generative AI and deep learning models, while central to debates on artificiality, raise political questions as part of a wider social ecosystem where technology is perpetually reimagined, negotiated, and contested: What images and stories feed the datasets that contemporary AI models are trained on? Which imaginaries are reproduced through AI-driven media technologies and which remain latent? How do synthetic media transform relations of power and visibility, and what methods—perhaps equally synthetic—can we develop to analyze these transformations? 

About the Autumn School

The five-day event at the University of Siegen explores the relationship between synthetic media and today’s imaginaries of culture and technology, which incorporate AI as an active participant. By “synthetic,” we refer not simply to the artificial but to how specific practices and ways of knowing take shape through human-machine co-creation. Imaginaries, in turn, reflect shared visions, values, and expectations—shaping not only what technologies do but how they are perceived and made actionable in everyday life. 

Event Highlights 

The five-day event features three keynotes and opens with a conference that brings together a total of six panels with contributions by scholars from Hong Kong, Norway, Australia, Germany, Austria, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, and the UK. 

Our keynotes

• “Synthetic Narration: Do AI-generated stories flatten cultural diversity?” by Jill Walker Rettberg (Center for Digital Narrative, University of Bergen) 
• “Synthetic situations: Ethnographic strategies for post-artificial worlds” by Gabriele de Seta (Center for Digital Narrative, University of Bergen) 
• “Design Research with visual generative AI: failures, challenges, and research pathways” by Ángeles Briones (DensityDesign Lab, Politecnico di Milano)

From the second day onwards, the Autumn School moves into hands-on workshops and project work facilitated by a team of interdisciplinary scholars and data designers. 

Mix questions! Monday, 8 September 

Day one opens space for emerging questions—think of it as an idea hub. The panels explore diverse topics, from identities and digital narratives to platforms, infrastructures, and the politics of AI. The discussion-focused format invites participants to pose questions, share concepts, and highlight methodological challenges in an open exchange, rather than focusing on individual presentations. 

Mix methods! Tuesday, 9 September-Thursday, 11 September 

The next three days are about exploring new methods—hands-on! Each of our project teams will present a research question alongside a specific method to be collaboratively explored. Participants will not only learn how to design prompts and work with AI-generated text and images, but also how to critically account for genAI models as platform models. All projects draw on intersectional approaches, combining qualitative and quantitative data to explore the synthetic dimensions of AI agency—with contributions by Gabriele De Seta (University of Bergen), Marcus Burkhardt (University of Paderborn), Hendrik Bender (University of Siegen), Marloes Geboers (University of Amsterdam), Elena Pilipets (University of Siegen), Riccardo Ventura (Politecnico di Milano), Andrea Benedetti (Politecnico di Milano), Ángeles Briones (Politecnico di Milano), Carolin Gerlitz (University of Siegen), Sara Messelaar Hammerschmidt (University of Siegen), Jill Walker Rettberg (University of Bergen). 

Synthesize! Friday, 12 September 

The final day is dedicated to sharing, reflecting, and synthesizing the questions, methods, and insights developed throughout the week. Project teams will present their collaborative processes, highlight key takeaways, and discuss how their ideas and approaches shifted through hands-on experimentation with methods. 

The Autumn School is organized by the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centers Media of Cooperation (SFB 1187) and Transformations of the Popular (SFB 1472) together with the Center of Digital Narrative in Bergen, the Digital Culture and Communication Section of ECREA and the German National Research Data Infrastructure Consortium NFDI4Culture.

Informationsveranstaltungen zur Einführung der elektronischen Patientenakte

Im Rahmen einer Informations- und Diskussionsveranstaltung haben Forscher*innen der Universität Siegen über die Nutzung der elektronischen Patientenakte aufgeklärt. Neben der Bereitstellung von allgemeinen Informationen boten sie Bürger*innen Gelegenheit, offene Fragen und Bedenken rund um das Thema zu diskutieren.

Über die Veranstaltung

In Kooperation mit dem Digitalen Facharzt- und Gesundheitszentrum (DFGZ) der Arztpraxis „Spieren & Kollegen“ führte das Teilvorhaben 4 „Gesundheit und Altern“ des Forschungsprojekts FUSION zusammen mit dem Teilprojekt des SFB A05 „Kooperative Herstellung von Nutzerautonomie im Kontext der alternden Gesellschaft“ bereits zwei Informations- und Diskussionsveranstaltungen zur Einführung der elektronischen Patientenakte (ePA) durch. Das zentrale Anliegen der Beteiligten ist dabei, die Hürden bei der Nutzung der ePA für Bürgerinnen und Bürger abzubauen und den Wissenstransfer unter den Arztpraxen in Südwestfalen zu unterstützen. Neben der Bereitstellung von allgemeinen Informationen zur elektronischen Patientenakte boten die Veranstaltungen daher auch Gelegenheit, offene Fragen und Bedenken rund um das Thema zu diskutieren.

Claudia Müller, Leiterin der beiden Forschungsprojekte, äußerte sich dazu, dass man natürlich mit solchen Veranstaltungen kein Massenpublikum erreiche, aber die Hoffnung habe, dass zahlreiche der über 100 Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer der beiden ePA-Veranstaltungen als Multiplikatoren fungieren werden. Eine Herausforderung besteht darin, dass nicht jede Person gleichermaßen die Fähigkeiten oder technischen Möglichkeiten mitbringe, um die elektronische Patientenakte tatsächlich selbst nutzen zu können. Dies sei zwar kein spezifisches Problem der ePA, müsse aber in Zeiten zunehmender Digitalisierung und Online-Angeboten berücksichtigt werden, so Müller weiter.

Dennis Kirschsieper, Mitarbeiter im Teilporjekt A05 des SFB, und Dr. Stephan Krayter, Mitarbeiter im FUSION-Projekt, haben das Projekt von Anfang an betreut und erläutern dazu:

„Es ist üblich, dass es bei der Einführung neuer Technologien Personen gibt, die diese direkt mit Neugier ausprobieren und nutzen – sogenannte ‚Technikpioniere‘ oder ‚Frühanwender‘ – und solche, die sich dem Neuen zögerlicher zuwenden, erst einmal bei anderen schauen und abwarten. Mit der Bereitstellung der Erfahrungen der Frühanwender tragen wir dazu bei, den Einstieg in die elektronische Patientenakte für andere zu vereinfachen.“

Kommende Interviewstudie: Aufruf zur Teilnahme

Nach der erfolgten Einführung der ePA geht es nun vor allem darum, den Austausch bei Problemen mit der elektronischen Patientenakte zu unterstützen und die Einführung sowie die tatsächliche Nutzung der ePA durch die Bürger*innen mittels einer qualitativen Interviewstudie zu begleiten.

Hierfür ruft das Forschungsteam zur Teilnahme auf. Ziel der Studie ist, die Erfahrungen der Nutzer*innen mit der elektronischen Patientenakte zu sammeln und wissenschaftlich auszuwerten.

Bei Interesse an einer Teilnahme an der Interviewstudie, wenden Sie sich gerne per Mail oder Telefon an

Dennis Kirschsieper: dennis.kirschsieper[æt]uni-siegen.de oder 0271 / 740-2002

Dr. Stephan Krayter: stephan.krayter[æt]uni-siegen.de oder 0271 / 740-3833

The 2025 RESAW Conference: Data, Communities, and Food … for Thoughts

by Valérie Schafer (University of Luxembourg & CRC 1187)

The 2025 edition of the RESAW conference marked a significant milestone: the tenth anniversary of a vibrant and constantly evolving academic community. Since its inception in 2015, this conference series has brought together researchers, archivists, and practitioners from diverse fields concerned with the history and present of the web. This year’s event was memorable, not only because of the anniversary, but also due to the remarkable richness of the exchanges, the diversity of its participants, and the depth of the contributions. RESAW joined forces with the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC 1187) Media of Cooperation, both coming together to study The Datafied Web and to preserve its histories.

→ conference website

About the RESAW conference and community

RESAW is the acronym for A REsearch Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials. The RESAW community is dedicated to working with digital cultural heritage and gathers every two years at the eponymous RESAW conference. RESAW was founded in 2012 with the goal of building a collaborative European research infrastructure for studying and working with web materials while fostering knowledge exchange across Europe. This presents significant challenges for both research and the archiving of web-based information and objects.

RESAW 2025 – The datafied Web at the University of Siegen

The conference drew close to one hundred participants from across Europe and North America. Among them were long-standing members of the community – some of whom have attended every edition since the beginning, as well as many newcomers, and notably from the CRC team at the University of Siegen. This mix created a dynamic and productive atmosphere, with new ideas and connections flourishing. It provided intellectual renewal and disciplinary cross-pollination.
The central theme, The Datafied Web, acted as a powerful conceptual anchor, encouraging reflection on how datafication has been and is reshaping the web, our methods, and our understanding of digital studies and web archives.
While many presentations were directly aligned with the theme, the conference also remained open to a wide array of topics beyond the scope of datafication. This flexibility is a longstanding strength of the event, allowing space for discussions of current research developments, methodological experimentation, and new discoveries in the fields of web archiving and web studies. Contributions ranged from updates on national and international web archiving initiatives to exploratory studies in platform studies or qualitative and quantitative methods.

RESAW set out to trace how the datafied web became the sensory media environment we now inhabit. A web of predictive suggestion, of per-user variation, of AI-generated aesthetic and ephemeral interfaces. A web where “what you see” is a product of where you clicked, what you hovered, which model you unknowingly trained. To study this web—and to preserve its histories—that is where the research agendas of Resaw and MoC come together. (Carolin Gerlitz, spokesperson of the CRC 1187)

A significant number of talks examined The Datafied Web through historical perspectives. These included case studies on the evolution of technologies such as the CD-ROM and Bluetooth, and their interaction with or transition into web-based platforms, shedding light on the frictions and continuities involved. Others focused on pressing current concerns, such as data surveillance, algorithmic governance, and the political economy of web and platform infrastructures.

The datafication of the web has brought about a decisive transformation of capitalism – and capitalist economies have in turn datafied the World Wide Web. Our current platform economies are based on the historical development of cookies, web advertising, and the measurement of public data. (Sebastian Gießman, head of the conference)

The interdisciplinary character of the conference was particularly evident this year. Approaches drawn from Web and Platform Studies, the History of Technology, Archival Studies, Digital Humanities, and Critical Data Studies were all present, and in fruitful dialogue. This interdisciplinarity was reflected not only in the themes discussed, but also in the methods employed: from close analysis to distant and scalable reading, and from infrastructure-focused studies to content-based investigations. Such methodological diversity illustrates the richness of the field and the necessity of hybrid approaches to fully grasp the complexities of the web’s past, present and future.

The keynote addresses were among the highlights of the conference. Nanna Bonde Thylstrup’s keynote offered a historically grounded presentation on the theme of data loss, linking it to broader narratives of memory, preservation, and forgetting in the digital age. Jonathan Gray’s keynote, by contrast, was more oriented toward the present and near future, addressing the stakes of open data, and the role of researchers in shaping ethical and inclusive data practices.

Beyond the formal sessions, a variety of pre-workshops, social events, and targeted meetings enriched the experience. Early-career researchers were given space to receive feedback and engage in mentoring dialogues. Pre-conference workshops offered hands-on methodological training and collaborative problem-solving. Roundtables tackled timely and strategic questions, such as the future of our scholarly RESAW network, and the challenges of studying datafication in the opening roundtable. (A personal conference trip report by Lesley Frew that focuses on her experience and some of the sessions is also available).

Of particular note was the attention paid to the epistemological and methodological implications of working with web data. Whether focusing on the politics of web archiving, the limits of data transparency, or the possibilities of algorithmic critique, many sessions interrogated not only what we know, but how we come to know it and what remains excluded or erased in the process. Case studies drawn from diverse geographical, historical and linguistic contexts further enriched these discussions, reminding us of the web’s heterogeneity and the need for grounded, situated and reflexive perspectives.

In conclusion, the 2025 conference was more than just a commemoration of ten years of scholarly exchange and conferences. It was a powerful reaffirmation of the value of community, dialogue, and interdisciplinary collaboration in the face of a rapidly evolving digital landscape and more generally world. The themes explored, the connections made, and the questions raised will no doubt continue to inspire work in the years to come.

We would like to sincerely thank again all the local organisers, all the participants who made this edition such a success, as well as the DFG and FNR, the University of Siegen, the CRC Media of Cooperation, and the C2DH at the University of Luxembourg for their support to this event.

The 2025 RESAW conference was organized by the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 “Media of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen in cooperation with the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) at the University of Luxembourg. The conference is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).

More

Press release by the University’s Press Office →

Conference report by Lesley Frew →

Knowledge, transfer and partners in research and public engagement

What is the role of Researchers in local, regional and national innovation ecosystems? Our training series discusses new ways and methods to engage with stakeholder and reflect on the impact our research might have. All parts will be lead by city2science.

→ our event site

About the workshop series

Openness, transparency and the ability to communicate with diverse audiences inside and outside academia are key competences in 21st century research and innovation. Transferrable skills in the areas of science communication and public engagement are increasingly relevant for academic and non-academic career paths, as well as for the acquisition of national and international funding. The interdisciplinary and interactive training series invites researchers to gain practical skills in science communication and public engagement. The course will empower researchers via a mix of input, reflections and practical sessions. A major goal of the training will be to enable participants to develop a communication plan related to (their individual) research topics and to communicate their key messages to diverse audiences in a clear and effective way.

Part #1: Start the Dialogue, Open Up Science! – Introduction to Science Communication and Public Engagement

• Current developments in science communication and public engagement

• Key concepts in science communication

• Identification of potential target groups and stakeholder

• Reflecting roles and responsibilities of researchers in science communication

• Clarification of individual needs in science communication

Part #2: Open Science and Open Innovation in Science Communication

Part #3: Communication Strategies and Pathways to Impact

• How to plan strategic communication and engagement activities related to (individual) research topics

• Develop skills and get to know concrete tools for clearly communicating research to target audiences and potential stakeholders

• Introduction to “Challenge- and Impact-Driven” research and communication

• Measures to maximize impact: Communication, dissemination and exploitation strategies

• Using different communication tools with a focus on Social Media, e.g. how to create a research(er’s) profile on Social Media

Part #4: Stakeholder Engagement and Engagement Formats