ZeMKI Professor Christian Katzenbach has taken over the role of Editor-in-Chief of the field-leading journal New Media & Society together with Australia-based professor Crystal Abidin. The journal has developed from a niche publication covering the emergence of the internet and social media into the key journal in the interdisciplinary field of digital media, communication, and technology.
Founded in 1999, New Media & Society has grown into one of the most-cited and most visible journals in the field, publishing research that spans disciplines from media and communication studies to sociology, science and technology studies, and computer science. Katzenbach has been engaged with the journal for over a decade — as author, reviewer, and member of the editorial board — before now taking on its leadership together with Crystal Abidin, Professor of Internet Studies at Curtin University in Australia. Abidin is known for her research on internet celebrity, influencer cultures, and digital ethnography, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region — bringing a complementary perspective to the journal’s new editorial leadership.
The appointment continues a long-standing thread in Katzenbach’s academic career: building institutional structures and formats of exchange for interdisciplinary fields that often lack them. He was involved in building up the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) in Berlin, brought the annual AoIR conference to the German capital (https://aoir.org/aoir2016 ) (2016), and co-founded the open-access journal Internet Policy Review. Journals and publication formats, in his view, are not just outlets for research but key infrastructures for a field’s community.
“These are exciting times to take over leadership of the key journal of an interdisciplinary and still developing field,” says Katzenbach. “Academic publishing itself is being challenged by generative technologies, and the subject of new media is undergoing another major transformation. As Editor-in-Chief, I want to keep positioning the journal as a particularly visible and engaging space for the community — closely connected to AoIR and other networked institutions — while increasing the regional diversity of the journal and securing high quality standards across a wide range of analytical and methodological approaches.”
The new role underscores ZeMKI’s continued presence in shaping international debates on media, technology and society, and strengthens the institute’s ties to the wider global community working on questions of digital media and technology.