Gerhard Vowe

Gerhard Vowe (2017)

Gerhard Vowe (* 1953 in Moers ) is a German political and communication scientist and professor at the Institute for Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf .

Career

Vowe is the youngest of four sons of the Protestant pastor Erich Vowe, who belonged to the professing church during the Nazi era . After graduating from high school in 1971 at the Adolfinum Gymnasium in Moers , Vowe began studying political science and history at the Free University of Berlin in the 1971/72 winter semester . The subject of information and documentation science was added in the course of the course. He finished his studies in 1978 with a diploma in political science . He then worked as an assistant from 1979 to 1983 in the information science department at the Institute for Mass Communication at the FU. From 1983 to 1987 he received a position as a research assistant in the field of "Technology and Politics" at the Institute for Political Science at the TH Darmstadt . He received his doctorate in 1984 with a thesis on "Information and communication as a bridge between science and society" at the Free University of Berlin. From 1987 on, Vowe worked again in Berlin at the Institute for Mass Communication in the three-year third-party funded project “Research Field Science”. His research dealt with the Enquête Commission of the Bundestag on risky technologies and technology assessment. From 1990 he was managing director of a course for professional journalists that was newly established at the institute.

With the paper on "Technology in Parliamentary Discourse", Vowe received his habilitation in political science at the TH Darmstadt in 1992 . Until 1997 he also worked as a private lecturer at the Humboldt University in Berlin . During this time he worked as a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Social Research in Cologne and as a visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts . In 1995/1996 he worked for a year at the Institute for Communication Studies at the TU Dresden . In 1998 he received a position as C3 professor for politics and media at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the TU Ilmenau , which he headed as director from 2001. Since December 2004, Vowe has been C4 Professor for Communication and Media Studies at the Institute for Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. From 2011 to 2018 he was the spokesman for the DFG research group "Political Communication in the Online World". The research group he led investigated how political communication changes under online conditions. Three exemplary results: (1) Political outsiders can smuggle their issues into the public via online media much more effectively than before. (2) A growing number of citizens no longer take the traditional mass media, but rather the social network media they use, to find out what public opinion is on explosive political issues. (3) Political organizations adapt to the changed communication conditions. Overall, these changes are so massive that we can speak of a new structural change in the public sphere.

In recent years, Vowe has increasingly dealt with problems of cooperation in research associations, such as how effort and income can be fairly distributed in a research association or how cooperative and competitive elements should be balanced in a network.

Vowe has led numerous research projects, mainly with funding from the DFG. After the end of his regular service in 2019, he continues to work as a senior professor at the University of Düsseldorf.

Vowe is married and has four children and two grandchildren.

Research areas

Vowe's work focuses on media politics and political communication, especially with regard to online communication. His fields of research concern the topics

• Political online communication
• Professional service providers in political communication
• Perceived media influences
• Cooperation in research associations
• Standards for (online) communication

Publications

Vowe has presented more than 200 publications, including 56 articles in German and English language journals. His last books are:

• Together with Martin Emmer and Jens Wolling: Citizens Online: The Development of Political Online Communication in Germany . UVK, Konstanz, 2011, ISBN 978-3867642798 .
• Ed. Together with Marco Dohle: Political entertainment - entertaining politics. Research on media content, media reception and media effects . Herbert von Halem Verlag, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-86962-064-0 .
• Edited together with Philipp Henn: Political communication in the online world: Theoretical approaches and research designs. Routledge, London / New York 2016, ISBN 978-1138900080 .

Teaching

Vowe has held over 250 courses in his university career, mainly on topics of political communication, media policy and media effects. He has supervised more than 300 theses and 19 doctorates in various courses.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard Vowe in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website at the University of Düsseldorf

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Website of the DFG research group "Political Communication in the Online World"