
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Sigrid Baringhorst
Researchers:
Lisa Villioth
Dr. Mundo Yang
Student Assistants:
Katharina Gröger
Katrin Hedemann
Andrea Issinger
Nicole Landefeld
Former Student Assistants:
Maurits Heumann
Björn Müller
Christoph Schweisfurth
With the help of social media new forms of civil society engagement have emerged. Particularly within the issue-publics of green energy and sustainable agriculture, citizens apply new approaches of publishing claims online as well as offline. The research project reconstructs these new forms of civic engagement by using interviews, participation diaries and netnografy. The goal is to elucidate change agents, main media practices, motives, and learning processes. The cases under study vary regarding their contentious or problem-solving, experimental character. The main objective of the research project is a new concept of 'creative publics' based on John Dewey's democratic experimentalism.

"Wir-haben-es-satt-Demonstration" Berlin, 16. Jan. 2016. Foto: Mundo Yang
Department Blog: https://greenovationunisiegen.wordpress.com/
Publications
Featured
This chapter focuses on how media used within political consumerism are to be studied. There are basically two research traditions in the state of the art. The first focuses on phenomena such as culture jamming, while the second analyzes the effects of discursive political consumerism on mass media. The former derives its concepts from media studies, while the latter applies methods such as content analysis and frame interpretation from communication studies.
Yang, M., & Baringhorst, S. (2018). Studying Media Within Political Consumerism: Past and Present. In M. Boström, M. Micheletti, & P. Oosterveer (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Consumerism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Publications
2019
Baringhorst, S.; Yang, M. and Witterhold, K., eds. 2019. “‘Doing political culture’ in Alltagspraktiken der Politisierung von Konsum. Theoretische und methodische Herausforderungen eines neuen Forschungsfelds der politischen Kulturforschung.” In
Politische Kulturforschung reloaded. Theorien, Methoden und Ergebnisse neuerer Forschung zum Zusammenhang von Politik und Kultur., edited by Bergem, W.; Diehl, P. and Lietzmann, H., 89-109. Wiesbaden: Springer.
https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839447475-005.
Baringhorst, Sigrid, eds. 2019. “Partizipation in invited und invented spaces des Internet – unpolitisch und postdemokratisch?.” In
Politische Partizipation im Medienwandel, edited by Engelmann, I.; Legrand, M. and Marzinkowski, H., 29-51. Berlin: Böhland&Schlemmer Verlag.
https://doi.org/10.17174/dcr.v6.2.
Baringhorst, Sigrid, eds. 2019. “Der Nutzer als Wächter – Zivilgesellschaftliche Medienpraktiken eines herrschaftskritischen Going Public im Internet.” In
Digitaler Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Ethik und politische Partizipation in interdisziplinärer Perspektive, edited by Bedford-Strohm, J., 103-119. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845291802-101.
Baringhorst, Sigrid; Marres, Noortje; Shove, Elizabeth and Wulf, Volker. 2019. “How Are Infrastructures and Publics Related and Why Should We Care? An Email Conversation.” In
Infrastructuring Publics, 69–86. Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20725-0_4.
Yang, Mundo; Villioth, Lisa and Radtke, Jörg, eds. 2019. “Foodsharing as the Public Manufacturing of Food Reuse.” In
Infrastructuring Publics / Making Infrastructures Public, edited by Korn, M.; Reißmann, W.; Röhl, T. and Sittler, D., 113-137. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20725-0_6.
2018
Yang, Mundo, eds. 2018. “NGOs im Netz: Tendenzen hin zu massenpersönlicher Kommunikation.” In
Handbuch NGO-Kommunikation, edited by Remus, Nadine and Rademacher, Lars, 277-293. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-18808-9_16.
2017
Baringhorst, Sigrid, eds. 2017. “Netzaktivismus. Neue Formen der Personalisierung und professionelle Bündelung zivilgesellschaftlichen Engagements.” In
Kongress zu Digitalisierung und Demokratie. Impulssammlung, edited by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 18-19. Berlin: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/akademie/13560.pdf.
Baringhorst, Sigrid; Yang, Mundo; Voss, Kathrin and Villioth, Lisa. 2017. “Webzentrierte Hybridkampagnen – Ausdruck postdemokratischer Protestpartizipation?.”
Leviathan 45 (33): 171-198.
https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845288413-170.
Yang, Mundo and Baringhorst, Sigrid, eds. 2017. “Politischer Konsum im Netz als Ausdruck des Wandelns politischer Partizipation.” In
Soziale Innovationen für nachhaltigen Konsum: Wissenschaftliche Perspektiven, Strategien der Förderung und gelebte Praxis, edited by Jaeger-Erben, Melanie; Rückert-John, Jana and Schäfer, Martina, 191-215. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16545-1_9.
2016
Baringhorst, Sigrid, eds. 2016. “Nachhaltigkeit durch politischen Konsum und Internetaktivismus – Neue Engagementformen zwischen postdemokratischer Partizipation und demokratischem Experimentalismus.” In
Demokratie und Nachhaltigkeit. Verbindungslinien, Potentiale und Reformansätze, edited by Diendorfer, Gertraut and Welan, Manfried, 43-60. Innsbruck: Studienverlag.
https://www.studienverlag.at/produkt/5577/demokratie-und-nachhaltigkeit/.