About us

On the  4th of July 2008, the Institute of Communication Science was founded at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences in Jena's Rosensäle. With this new foundation, Jena's communication science department agreed on a unified empirical-social science orientation in research and teaching and separated itself structurally from the philosophical-humanities-oriented media science department, which is based at the Faculty of Philosophy.

The four founding fathers

• Prof. Georg Ruhrmann: Basics of media communication and media impact
• Prof. Wolfgang Seufert: Communication science with a focus on economics and organization of the media
• Prof. Wolfgang Frindte: Communication Psychology (emeritus since April 2017)
• Prof. Bertram Scheufele: Empirical Methods in Communication Science (since October 2010 at the University of Hohenheim)

focused their areas of work on an interdisciplinary basis, in particular sociology, political science, psychology and economics. The Institute launched its first BA course in Communication Studies in the 2007/08 winter semester and the consecutive Master's course in Public Communication in 2009/10. In the course of a generational change at professorial level, the Institute is currently developing a new direction in research and teaching. This takes into account the increasing digitalization of public communication.

Our annual reports provide a detailed overview of our research and teaching activities.