Christian Katzenbach is Professor of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on media governance and platform economics at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen. In Bremen, Christian is head of the Lab “Platform Governance, Media, and Technology“ and director of the MA programme Digital Media and Society.
In 2024, Christian is a Visiting Professor at Department of Media and Communications the London School of Economics (LSE). He is an Associated researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, that he helped to build up from 2011 onwards. Christian completed his PhD at Freie Universität Berlin with a dissertation thesis on “Governance, Technology and Communication” (2016, summa cum laude). The thesis was awarded the two-year dissertation prize of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) and the dissertation prize Media-Culture-Communication.
In research and teaching, Christian addresses the interrelationships of communication, technology and politics in the context of the digitalisation of society. Currently he focusses on the conceptual and empirical investigation of the regulation and governance of the internet and platforms, the role of data, algorithms and infrastructures for the (re-)organisation of societal communication, as well as discourses and regulation of “artificial intelligence”.
Christian leads large international third-party funded projects on these topics, funded by the DFG, the EU’s H2020 framework programme, the BMBF, the Volkswagen Foundation and the Federal Agency for Civic Education (BpB).
Selected Projects
Selected Publications
- Quintais, J. P., Katzenbach, C., Schwemer, S. F., Dergacheva, D., Riis, T., Mezei, P., Harkai, I., & Magalhães, J. C. (2024). Copyright Content Moderation in the European Union: State of the Art, Ways Forward and Policy Recommendations. IIC – International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40319-023-01409-5
- Dergacheva, D., & Katzenbach, C. (2023). Mandate to overblock? Understanding the impact of the European Union’s Article 17 on copyright content moderation on YouTube. Policy & Internet, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.379
- Dergacheva, D., & Katzenbach, C. (2023). “We Learn Through Mistakes”: Perspectives of Social Media Creators on Copyright Moderation in the European Union. Social Media + Society, 9(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231220329
- Brause, S. R., Zeng, J., Schäfer, M. S., & Katzenbach, C. (2023). Media representations of artificial intelligence: Surveying the field. In Handbook of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence (pp. 277–288). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781803928562/book-part-9781803928562-30.xml
- Jobin, A., & Katzenbach, C. (2023). The becoming of AI: A critical perspective on the contingent formation of AI. In Handbook of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence (pp. 43–55). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781803928562/book-part-9781803928562-9.xml
- Hepp, A., Loosen, W., Dreyer, S., Jarke, J., Kannengießer, S., Katzenbach, C., Malaka, R., Pfadenhauer, M., Puschmann, C., & Schulz, W. (2022). Von der Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion zur kommunikativen KI. Publizistik, 67(4), 449–474. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11616-022-00758-4
- Richter, V., Katzenbach, C., & Schäfer, M. S. (2023). Imaginaries of artificial intelligence. In Handbook of Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence (pp. 209–223). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781803928562/book-part-9781803928562-24.xml
- Katzenbach, C. (2022). Der „Algorithmic turn“ in der Plattform-Governance. KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 74, 283–305. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-022-00837-4
- Liebig, L., Güttel, L., Jobin, A., & Katzenbach, C. (2022). Subnational AI policy: Shaping AI in a multi-level governance system. AI & Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01561-5
- Katzenbach, C. (2021). “AI will fix this” – The Technical, Discursive, and Political Turn to AI in Governing Communication. Big Data & Society, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211046182
- Bareis, J., & Katzenbach, C. (2021). Talking AI into Being: The Narratives and Imaginaries of National AI Strategies and Their Performative Politics. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 47(5), 855–881. https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439211030007
- Gorwa, R., Binns, R., & Katzenbach, C. (2020). Algorithmic content moderation: Technical and political challenges in the automation of platform governance: Big Data & Society, 7(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719897945
- Magalhães, J. C., & Katzenbach, C. (2020). Coronavirus and the frailness of platform governance. Internet Policy Review, 1. https://policyreview.info/articles/news/coronavirus-and-frailness-platform-governance/1458
- Katzenbach, C., & Ulbricht, L. (2019). Algorithmic governance. Internet Policy Review, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1424
- Hofmann, J., Katzenbach, C., & Gollatz, K. (2017). Between coordination and regulation: Finding the governance in Internet governance. New Media & Society, 19(9), 1406–1423. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816639975
- Katzenbach, C. (2017). Die Regeln digitaler Kommunikation. Governance zwischen Norm, Diskurs und Technik. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-19337-9