Jörg Becker (political scientist)

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Jörg Becker 2011

Jörg Becker (born September 17, 1946 in Bielefeld ) is a German social scientist and local politician ( non-party , but active for Die Linke ).

Life

Jörg Becker studied political science, German and pedagogy at the universities of Marburg , Tübingen and Bern from 1966 to 1970 . In 1970 he completed his studies with the first state examination for teaching at grammar schools at the University of Marburg. 1977 doctorate he became Dr. phil. at the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Marburg, where he also completed his habilitation in 1981 . In 1987 the Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Marburg awarded him the title of Honorary Professor and the Technical University of Darmstadt the title of Privatdozent. From 1987 to 1992 Becker was a Heisenberg fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) . From 1999 to 2011 he taught as a visiting professor at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Innsbruck .

Becker worked from 1971 to 1975 as a research assistant at the Hessian Foundation for Peace and Conflict Research (PRIF) in Frankfurt am Main and from 1974 to 1980 as a scientific advisor to the Frankfurt Book Fair . Since then he has been working as a freelance social scientist. From 1987 to 2010 he headed the Institute for Communication and Technology Research KomTech GmbH, which he founded, first in Frankfurt and then in Solingen, as main shareholder and scientific director. The minority shareholder was Arthur Fischer, managing director of the Frankfurt market research institute Psydata GmbH.

Becker is married to Ursula Becker, a teacher at Vogelsang High School in Solingen, and has four children and two grandchildren. He lives in Solingen in the Bergisches Land. Becker sits as an independent representative of the party Die Linke in the city council of Solingen.

Create

Becker's main focus is on international media policy, especially with regard to Latin America, Africa and Asia. While the image of the Third World in German media was in the foreground in his work on books for children and young people, he soon turned to structural questions of a New International Information Order (NIIO). In the eighties, Becker organized numerous international conferences for the joint venture of Evangelical Journalism (GEP) in Frankfurt, the Evangelical Academy Arnoldshain, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) in Bonn and the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in Eschborn and supervised many projects. In the nineties, in cooperation with the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing (GMD) in St. Augustin, he turned to media and technology policy in general and particularly in Eastern Europe. Since the turn of the millennium, he has concentrated on the two topics of media and war and media and migration.

Becker's extensive scientific and journalistic work is completely in the Solingen city archive.

General

Following the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer , Becker sees himself as a social theorist who examines the political function of communication and media for society and not as a communication and media scientist. Starting from the democratic-theoretical potential of the media as the fourth estate and a critical public that is distant from the state and commercial, questions of the political economy of the media, media manipulation, the abuse of power and the ideological role of media are at the center of his scientific interest. In his work on non-European cultures, Becker takes neither the position of philosophical universalism nor that of cultural relativism, but the mediating position of relative cultural relativism.

Much of Becker's work has been criticized by established sources. For example his study on database cooperation in the East-West conflict from 1985, which provided empirical evidence that, contrary to official government statements, there was extensive cooperation between databases in Eastern Europe and the FRG or his work on the Deutsche Welle TV program in 1998 which could show that this expensive TV program plays no role in Asia.

Becker's biography about Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann , published in April 2013, polarized the public and was discussed very controversially. Negative reviews and pans in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , the Welt , the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , and the Junge Freiheit were positive reviews in Falter , Socialism , Background, Junge Welt , Neue Rheinische Zeitung , triple c, Neues Deutschland , Ossietzky and the European Journal of Communication. Soon after the publication of this book, Ralph Erich Schmidt-Noelle, great-nephew and adopted son of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, filed an application for an injunction against the book at the Cologne Regional Court, since Becker's claim that Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann had one of her de-Nazification certificates was false forged. In a declaration of cease and desist , Becker undertook not to continue to raise the allegation of falsification, but further proven errors in content forced Becker and his publisher to take the book off the market. Since August 2013 this biography about Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann is no longer available.

In addition to his work as a social scientist, Becker is an active specialist journalist. He publishes his articles in epd-Entwicklungspolitik, Frankfurter Rundschau, Neues Deutschland, Junge Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Solinger Morgenpost, Le Monde Diplomatique, Basler Magazin and Die Presse. From 2007 to 2009 he wrote a regular culture column in the Offenbach-based Turkish magazine Zukunft.

Teaching

Becker's diverse experience in academic teaching has led him to various positions at the following universities: Marburg , Gießen , Essen , Münster , Darmstadt , Frankfurt , Salzburg , Innsbruck , Bozen , Roskilde , American University of Beirut and Hong Kong Baptist University . In the nineties Becker held a visiting professorship for applied computer science at both the Vienna University of Technology and the University of Bremen . During his work at the University of Innsbruck, he led 14-day political science excursions to the following countries: 2005 Lebanon , 2007 Georgia , 2008 Mali , 2009 Uzbekistan , 2010 Myanmar and 2011 North Korea .

labor union

Becker has been a union member since 1972. In Solingen he was chairman of the city federation of the German trade union federation (DGB) from 2005 to 2010 , of which he is still a member today. Since 2001 he has also been a member of the presidium and board of the Ver.di district of Rhein-Wupper. His municipal political tasks include organizing a series of political lectures by the DGB. Prominent speakers in this series in recent years have included Friedhelm Hengsbach , Werner Rügemer , Ueli Mäder , Rudolf Dreßler , Sahra Wagenknecht and Ivo Gönner .

Works (selection)

  • Everyday racism. Afro-American Racial Conflicts in the Children's and Young People's Book of the Federal Republic, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag 1977. 2nd edition 1992.
  • The Third World in Children's Books, Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft 1978.
  • Free flow of information? Information on the New International Information Order, Frankfurt: Joint work of Protestant journalism 1979.
  • African literature in development education, Munich: Weltforum Verlag 1981.
  • Information technology in the third world. A critical analysis of theoretical and empirical studies, Frankfurt: Flach Verlag 1984.
  • Information Technology and a New International Order. Preface by Seán MacBride , Lund: Student Literature Publishing House 1984.
  • Media power in the north-south conflict. The New International Information Regulation, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1984.
  • Mass media in the north-south conflict, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag 1985.
  • Communication and Domination. Essays to Honor Herbert I. Schiller, Norwood NJ: Ablex 1986.
  • Paper Technology and the Third World. Economic framework conditions and technical alternatives for the production of cultural paper, Braunschweig and Wiesbaden: Vieweg Verlag 1986.
  • Tecnología de la Información Reto para el Tercer Mundo, Lima: Instituto Para América Latina 1988.
  • Telephoning, Marburg: Jonas Verlag 1989.
  • Europe speaks to Europe. International Information Flows between Eastern and Western Europe. With a preface by Willy Brandt , Oxford: Pergamon Press 1989.
  • Small Pulp and Paper Mills in Developing Countries. Preface by Sam Pitroda , New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company 1991.
  • Databases and power. Areas of conflict and areas of action, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1992.
  • Europe speaks to Europe: Telecommunications in a common European house. Preface by Michel D. Doo Kingué , Frankfurt: Haag + Herchen and Moscow: ICSTI 1993.
  • Long distance speaking. International telecommunications history, sociology and politics, Berlin: Vistas-Verlag 1994.
  • Internet o Viet Nam va cac nuoc dang phat trien, Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Va Ky Thaut 2000.
  • Internet in Asia, Singapore: Asian Media Information and Communication Center 2001.
  • Internet in Malaysia, Bangi: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2001.
  • Turkish media culture in Germany. 3 vol., Loccum: Evangelical Academy Loccum 2000/2002/2003.
  • Information and Society, Vienna: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Springer 2002.
  • Media between war and peace, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag 2002.
  • Shimmering Asia. The television development of a continent on the move, Vienna: Österreichischer Kunst- und Kulturverlag 2002.
  • Internet in Malaysia and Vietnam, Hamburg: German Overseas Institute 2002.
  • Communication and Conflict. Studies in International Relations. Preface by Johan Galtung , New Delhi: Concept Publishing House 2005.
  • with Mira Beham : Operation Balkans. Advertisement for war and death, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag 2006; 2nd edition with a foreword by Norman Paech 2008, ISBN 978-3832935917 .
  • Cinema Heimat Solingen. About the heyday of the cinema, Solingen: Stadtarchiv 2010.
  • The digitization of media and culture. Preface by Lothar Bisky , Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2013, ISBN 978-3658007287 .
  • Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann : Demoscopist between Nazi ideology and conservatism, Paderborn: Schöningh 2013, ISBN 978-3-506-77614-3 .
  • Media in War - War in the Media, Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2015, ISBN 978-3658074760 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www2.solingen.de/C12572F80037DB19/0/Sitzungsdienst_2014__Gremienverbindungen?OpenDocument&r0=Beteiligungsausschuss&s0=2&nocache=1  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www2.solingen.de  
  2. ↑ Becker, Jörg: Databases in the East-West Conflict. The position of the Federal Republic of Germany in cross-border data traffic between East and West, Schmitten / Ts .: Evangelische Akademie Arnoldshain 1985.
  3. ↑ Becker, Jörg and Salamanca, Daniel: The invisible late arrival. Deutsche Welle television in Asia, Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation 1998.
  4. ↑ Cf. Stauss, Frank: Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann was a contentious, strictly conservative networker, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 11, 2013; Wolffsohn, Michael: Infamous accounting with Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, in: FAZ, June 24, 2013; Kellerhoff, Sven Felix: Noelle Neumann biography is grossly incorrect, in: Die Welt, June 25, 2013; Güntner, Joachim: The shimmering past of “Pythia vom Bodensee”, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 26, 2013; Hinz, Thorsten: Infamy remains constant, in: Junge Freiheit, June 28, 2013.
  5. ↑ Cf. Gepp, Thomas: Mittendrin in der Schweigespirale, in: Falter, No. 21/2013; Prokop, Dieter: Opinion research: Leading the masses through mass surveys ?, in: Socialism, No. 6/2013; Schiffer, Sabine: Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann: Posthumous fall from the high plinth ?, in: Background, June 10, 2013; Rügemer, Werner: Opinion research as an instrument of rule, in: Junge Welt - literature supplement, June 12, 2013; Hecht-Galinski, Evelyn: On the occasion of Jörg Becker's Noelle Neumann book, which is well worth reading, in: Neue Rheinische Zeitung, July 7, 2013; Fuchs, Christian: Review of Jörg Becker's Book “Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. Demoskopin between Nazi ideology and conservatism ”, in: triple c, July 7, 2013; Kannapin, Detlef: People's view as ideology Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and the self-image of the Federal Republic of Germany, in: Neues Deutschland, July 13, 2013; Kebir, Sabine: Almost Goebbels' Adjutantin, in: Ossietzky, No. 19/2013; Splichal, Slavko: Legacy of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann: The spiral of silence and other controversies, in: European Journal of Communication, No. 3/2015, pp. 353–363.
  6. ↑ Facsimile of the declaration of omission (Appendix 1)
  7. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, September 4, 2013 [1]
  8. ↑ Sven Kellerhoff reports on the unscientific nature identified by Peter Hoeres : Noelle Neumann biography is grossly flawed , in: Die Welt , June 25, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Becker, Jörg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH September 17, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielefeld