文摘
On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of German communication studies and of the Leipzig institute for newspaper research, this article presents a short overview of the institute’s changing history, followed by systematic considerations on the discipline as integrative scholarship. The transformation of the field in post-war West Germany from the normative-historical “Publizistik” to empirical-descriptive communication studies is not only an advancement but also a restriction. The focus on the empirical side may be accompanied by a loss of historical and normative approaches, and thus by a loss of the demand for an integrative scholarship. If there is a lack of normative reflection and historical contemplation of the deeper meaning, the danger of idle, voided research emerges – a research that can be instrumentalized and misused by power interests. What is therefore needed, in addition to integrating excluded approaches and developing a reflected science ethics, are a critical distance to fads in academe, better mentoring of junior faculty, more communication across disciplinary and methodological borders, and a stronger societal involvement of communication studies.
