Well done: Students present their work in the "Projektforum"

In it, Franka Bergmann, Enikő Czentnár, Julia Dötsch, Lena Friedrich, Milena Stein, Alena Wolff and Lennart Zieger dealt with a more conscious approach to disinformation and deepfakes on the internet. Because the creation of deceptively real image, audio and video files has become increasingly easy in view of great advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). So-called deepfakes are becoming increasingly well-known and spreading rapidly in the online media. The aim of the project was to take a media-pedagogical look at the topic and to find out which media-didactic concepts are best suited to sensitise young people to disinformation, especially deepfakes, in order to learn how to deal with media content in a competent and appropriate way. The group convinced the jury with their study this year. The first supervisors of the work were Professor Patrick Rössler and Dr Markus Seifert; the second supervisor was Professor Daniel Hajok. The "Thüringer Landesmedienanstalt" an the Junge Medien Erfurt e.V. supported the project as a partner.

But the five other projects also examined exciting topics again, namely:

• Express Yourself: To what extent does the opinion of social media users change through writing and publishing comments?
• Antagonists Research Group: How has the cinematic representation of antagonists developed?
• SexLab: The portrayal of sexual education and prevention content on selected Instagram channels and its perception by users
• Cancel Culture in Academia: To what extent does the phenomenon of cancel culture restrict academic freedom at universities in Germany?
• Media (co-)feeling: An empirical study of TV coverage and its contribution to the solidarity attitude of the audience

All project descriptions can be found in the "Projektforum 2023" brochure (in German only).

Congratulations to all project teams and especially to the winners of the 2023 award!