Guest lectures at the University of Paderborn

Members of the Center Igor Vobič and Sašo Slaček were invited by the head of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Paderborn, Christian Fuchs, to present their work. The event Media and Communication Critique at the Margins, which took place on June 16, discussed how and why critical approaches in media and communication studies have been mainly located at the margins throughout their history, both theoretically and geographically. 

Sašo Slaček presented his research on the marginalization of Marxism in mainstream communication studies, based on a paper he co-authored with Boris Mance, which was recently published in a special issue of the journal Critical Sociology. The authors use data from the scholarly database Web of Science to uncover the marginalization of Marxian authors and ideas throughout most of the history of communication studies. In addition, they use network analysis to uncover the ways in which different schools of thought adopt and adapt Marx’s ideas. 

In his talk, Igor Vobič traced the history of critical communication research at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana and its predecessors, using a narrative that revolves around key moments. Adopting an approach that views institutional history as a series of discontinuities, he offered insights into the ways in which communication theories and empirical research have been reconfigured and recontextualized in relation to broader socio-political changes. 

Their presentations were followed by a lively discussion with the members of the Department of Media Studies.