„The MGK is the central location for teaching and innovating methods. It contributes significantly to the CRC's overarching goal of conducting basic digital research and communicating, reflecting on and developing innovative methods. The MGK trains doctoral candidates in an internationally oriented, interdisciplinary program.“
We are delighted to announce the programme for the forthcoming Autumn School, Synthetic Social Media: Studying Platform-Embedded AI, taking place at the University of Siegen, 22–25 September.
The programme is organised around three themes: AI Slop / Slopification (Day 1), Chatbot / Appification (Day 2), and Persona / Affective Infrastructure (Day 3), featuring presentations by Stijn Peeters, Marloes Geboers, Salvatore Romano, Carine Roos, Giorgia Arbuti, Natalia Stanusch, Tanja Sihvonen, Jimmy Mäkelä, Natalia Sánchez-Querubín, Nuppu Pelevina, Lilli Sihvonen, Elena Pilipets, and Marcus Bösch.
The three themes are brought into conversation through keynotes by Gabriele De Seta, Esther Weltevrede, Sara Messelaar Hammerschmidt, and Carolin Gerlitz, followed by collaborative method-mapping workshops in breakout groups supported by data designers Ángeles Briones and Riccardo Ventura.
Reflecting on synthetic/human-machine co-created data, participants will brainstorm ways to combine different methodological pathways, analytical techniques, and research tools to study platform-embedded AI through qualitative inquiry and critical technical practice. The workshops integrate hands-on data exploration and visual mapping on Miro boards, using methodological prototyping as a mode of inquiry. Each workshop is tailored to the day’s theme, exploring questions of field access/data collection, research tool inscriptions, sense-making/sensing, methodological frictions, and the ethical challenges posed by synthetic data and AI-mediated environments. The specific affordances of the media phenomena at hand are central. Our main interest is to explore how these affordances inform the method(s).
The Autumn School concludes (on Day 4) with a collective reflection on the outcomes of the method mapping workshops, bringing together the insights and questions that emerged over the course of the programme.
Synthetic Social Media: Studying Platform-Embedded AI
Social media platforms are increasingly shaped by the integration of generative AI alongside long-standing analytical and predictive models. Today’s algorithmic systems are moving from the background infrastructure to the forefront of digital social life – intervening in the content feeds as conversational agents like xAI’s Grok, reshaping identity through synthetic likenesses of OpenAI’s Sora-2, and expanding the social ecosystem itself through projects like Butterflies AI and Moltbook, where autonomous AI agents operate in coexistence with (or independently of) human users. As these developments rapidly outpace existing research frameworks, the need for mixed critical methodologies grows more urgent.
Synthetic social media research takes as its starting point the recognition that platforms shaped by generative AI are not simply data-processing systems but cultural environments organized through algorithms, interfaces, and shared ways of feeling and knowing. Analytically, the attribute “synthetic” implies more than artificial arrangements of collective agency. Rather than treating AI as a radical rupture, it situates generative systems within broader arrangements of human-machine co-creation that amplify specific imaginaries, values, and concerns. Methodologically, it foregrounds ambiguities in how AI platforms recalibrate meaning and how users develop a practical “feel” for algorithmic systems while negotiating their constraints.
Critical digital methods have responded to these developments by treating chatbots and generative systems as part of the research design as well as objects of inquiry in their own right. Synthetic text, images, and sounds are no longer exceptional artifacts but common platform vernaculars, sustained by entangled practices of prompting, remixing, and circulation. Within platform studies, interface methods, visual digital methods, and emerging forms of synthetic ethnography, AI systems have been repurposed for formatting, summarization, annotation, labeling, and the generation of synthetic data, while being interrogated for how they shape knowledge production. This work has foregrounded questions of method: Are we merely studying AI slop, distracted by the automated excess of content stripped of context and meaning, or are we witnessing the redefinition of social media itself along with its affordances and cultures of use?
The 2026 Autumn School edition of the CRC “Media of Cooperation” tackles this question by focusing on generative AI as an infrastructural, cultural, and regulated component of social media platforms across three intersecting dimensions: At the cultural level of everyday use, it refers to the routinized practices of prompting or interacting with platform-embedded generative systems through multimodal inputs. Infrastructurally, it signals a shift in agency, as platforms keep multiplying affordances that nudge us into co-producing synthetic outputs. Finally, it foregrounds research techniques for probing AI models in their entanglements with the platform governance and moderation regimes.
Against this background, we invite participants to submit short contributions inspired by, though not limited to, one of the following “how to” prompts:
How to repurpose AI personas as research personas
How to rethink walkthrough methods in light of platforms’ generative affordances
How to approach cultural biases conditioned by AI systems and prompt cultures
How to study AI moderation as platform policy in action
How to explore platform agency and its steering ideologies
How to integrate screenshots as a method for capturing synthetic situations
How to account for the ambiguities emerging from human-machine co-creation
How to develop non-extractive approaches to researching AI platforms
Participants are invited to submit a short abstract (maximum 500 words excluding references) outlining how their work relates to the event’s theme. Presentations should raise questions or provocations rather than present finished research. Accepted abstracts will be grouped into thematic sessions and discussed in a collaborative, dialogue-focused format.
Submit your proposal by 30. April 2026 Notification of acceptance by 15 May 2026 Registration by 15 June 2026
The event opens with a one-day conference and moves into hands-on workshops and project work. Accepted abstracts will be grouped into thematic sessions curated by the organising team. Presenters will be connected via email ahead of time to coordinate their contributions. The first day is about presentations and discussions. The next three days are dedicated to exploring and developing methods – hands-on! We invite you to join a team of interdisciplinary scholars and data designers in probing new methodological combinations. Each of our project teams will present a research question alongside a specific method to be collaboratively explored. Please bring your laptops. The project titles will be announced soon. The event is free of charge, though attendees are responsible for arranging and covering their travel and accommodation in Siegen.
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”.
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 CRC awards two short-term scholarships to promote the work of early-career researchers who are conducting research in the field of digital media, sensing and sensor technology, data practices and AI and are interested in a longer-term collaboration with the CRC.
The basic amount of the scholarship is based on the maximum rate of the DFG (1.365,- EUR). In addition, an allowance for material expenses and, if applicable, a child allowance will be paid.
Basic amount of the scholarship: EUR 1,365 (maximum DFG rate)
Material cost allowance and, if applicable, child allowance are paid in addition
About the CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation“
The CRC is an interdisciplinary collaborative research centre consisting of 19 subprojects and more than 60 researchers from media studies, ethnology, sociology, computer science, linguistics, ubiquitous computing, science and technology studies, education, law and engineering.
The Collaborative Research Centre 1187 has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since 2016. The research centre studies digital media, which have emerged as cooperative tools, platforms and infrastructures on a broad front, and approaches them as cooperatively accomplished means of cooperation. In the first funding phase (2016-2019), the CRC focused on the relevance of social media and platforms, while the second phase (2020-2023) centered on data-intensive media and data practices. Phase 3 (2024-2027) inquires the interplay between sensor media and artificial intelligence.
The short-term fellowship program of the CRC provides national and international doctoral students the opportunity to further develop their research project in the CRC, to get to know participating researchers and to exchange ideas with them. The research projects of the scholarship holders should be thematically related to the subprojects of the CRC, so that their work can be supported by the principal investigators and their teams. Scholarship holders are assigned to the Integrated Research Training Group (MGK) of the CRC and benefit from its structured training program. The CRC offers scholarship holders an international environment for interdisciplinary media research as well as an extensive program of events and training in ethnographic, digital, sensor-based, linguistic, and AI-based methods.
Relevant, above-average degree in one of the disciplines participating in or related to the CRC, preferably in media and cultural studies, sociology or in the field of socio- or business informatics, human-computer interaction or information systems (equivalent to a Master’s degree, Magister, Diplom or Lehramt/Staatsexamen Sek. II)
Individual research project in one of the above-mentioned disciplines within the subject area of the CRC. Ideally, you can assign the project to one of the subareas of the CRC: infrastructures, publics, or sensory praxeology
Interest in methods of media research, the analysis of data practices and an affinity for working in an interdisciplinary research environment
Willingness to participate in the international event program of the CRC and the MGK
Very good written and spoken English language skills
Your Tasks
Expectations of successful candidates:
Regular participation and involvement in the events and the training program of the MGK (colloquia, workshops, summer schools, methodology workshops, interdisciplinary groups)
Presentation of preliminary results of the individual research project within the MGK colloquium
About the application
Please send your application documents (letter of motivation, curriculum vitae, copies of certificates, 5-10-page outline of a project idea) as a single PDF file (max 5 mb) to dominik.schrey@uni-siegen.de by 25 June 2025. Please note that risks to confidentiality and unauthorized access by third parties cannot be ruled out when communicating by unencrypted e-mail.
About the University
The University of Siegen is an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan university with currently around 18,000 students and a range of subjects from the humanities, social sciences and economics to natural sciences, engineering and life sciences. With over 2,000 employees, we are one of the largest employers in the region and offer a unique environment for teaching, research and further education.
Equal opportunities and diversity are promoted and actively practiced at the University of Siegen. Applications from women are highly welcome and will be given special consideration in accordance with the federal state equality law. We also welcome applications from people with different personal, social and cultural backgrounds, people with disabilities and those of equal status.
Information about the University of Siegen can be found on our homepage: www.uni-siegen.de.
The "Integrated Research Training Group" (MGK) module set up in the second funding phase has developed into the central location for doctoral training and makes a significant contribution to the SFB's overarching goal of carrying out fundamental digital research and innovative method development. Through university-financed doctoral positions and scholarships, MGK has been able to expand the range of sub-project topics and make a significant contribution to developing digital praxeology.
In the third funding phase, MGK is also the location of the internationally oriented, interdisciplinary doctoral training, which runs across SFB's sub-projects. In terms of content, MGK follows the claim of SFB to investigate cooperation in sensor-intensive environments. It pursues three central goals: (1) to conceptually and methodically structure media, data and sensory practice analysis, (2) to examine the role of sensors in the cooperation process in the field of tension between public spheres and infrastructures and (3) to implement methodological innovation. Using sensors expands the dimensions that contribute to the reciprocal executive reality of media: in addition to infrastructure and the public sphere, surroundings and bodies come into focus.
MGK uses the cooperation and event formats successfully tested in the second phase to conduct these debates across the sub-projects and disciplines involved as well as generate new thematic impulses. Doctoral students are thus enabled to acquire relevant skills for their careers in interdisciplinary media research. MGK organizes events, training courses, postdoc mentorships and publications that further develop both the concepts of cooperation and data in the context of sensor data. To this end, it cooperates with the university's own institutions for graduate training, such as the House of Young Talents, Welcome Center for international researchers and Women Career Service. The training program is closely linked to SFB's internationalization strategy, in that international doctoral students are involved as scholarship holders and international fellows and guests are systematically integrated into the training.
MGK is the central place for communicating and innovating methods. The basics of praxeological, digital and sensor-based methods are taught through profile-forming formats such as method workshops (research tech labs) and data labs, international summer schools, media practice theory workshops, small interdisciplinary groups and collaborative publications. MGK's method training creates space for developing Inventive Methodologies that address the specific challenges of sensor-based empirical fields and objects, which need to be examined in their infrastructural distribution, public controversies and cooperative-physical sensory system.
Ein PI-Konsortium mit Expertisen in Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften, Digital Sociology and Methods, Angewandte Linguistik und Human Computer Interaction begleitet die interdisziplinären Promotionen.
Kooperation mit externen Promovierenden durch das Stipendienprogramm.
Das Veranstaltungsprogramm vermittelt theoretische und methodische Grundlagen der digitalen Medienpraxisforschung
Kolloquien & Werkstatt Medienpraxistheorie
Interdisziplinäre Kleingruppen & Schreibretreats
Research Tech Labs &
Data Labs
Internationale Sommerschulen
Breites Unterstützungsnetzwerk
Internes Mentoring
Internationales Netzwerk an Mercator-Fellows und Kooperationspartner*innen
