Summary DGPuK Annual Conference: Contributions of the OCL Team
From March 18 to 20, 2026, the 71st Annual Conference of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) took place at the Institute of Journalism at TU Dortmund University. Under the theme #Science #Communication #Democracy, researchers gathered in Dortmund to discuss “the interplay between science and (journalistic as well as non-journalistic) mediated communication against the backdrop of democracies under pressure worldwide” (quote from the call for papers).
The program also featured several contributions from the Online Communication Lab. An overview of the presentations:
- Emotional Labour, Work, and Coping: The Invisible Work of Social Issue Influencers
Sofie Beisemann, Svenja Boberg, Thorsten Quandt - Struggles over Interpretive Authority: Strategies of Political Issue Appropriation Along Antagonistic Lines of Conflict in the German Federal Election Campaign on TikTok
Johanna Klapproth, Thorsten Quandt - Fighting Media with Media: The Anti-Media Escalation Model
Johanna Klapproth, Saïd Unger, Thorsten Quandt - A Survey Study on the Relationship Between Problematic Social Media Use and Eating Disorders (poster)
Lena Maria Küpper, Felix Reer - “You Take What Resonates with You and Leave the Rest”: Esoteric Beliefs on TikTok (poster)
Anna Davydova, Saïd Unger, Thorsten Quandt
Founded in 1963, the DGPuK is today the largest academic association for communication research in the German-speaking world.