Description
At a time when digital tools, social networks and new forms of communication are profoundly changing the way people connect and inform themselves, the question arises: how do publics arise and develop? The structural change in the media has not only changed the dynamics of our public discourses, but has also given rise to new forms of communities and publics. The lecture uses individual examples from recent history to show how public spheres are constituted and questions who controls these spaces, how opinions are formed and which groups have access or are excluded.

The process of ‘making publics’ is understood as dynamic and increasingly without boundaries. At the centre are ‘Public Fictions’, a method at the interface of the arts and media studies that deals with the construction of realities and their public dissemination. The aim of these fictions is not only to question existing power structures, but also to open up emancipatory possibilities, to create alternative realities and to integrate different voices into public discourse in order to jointly develop spaces in which an exchange of ideas and values can take place.