The Research Training Group “Connecting Virtual and Real Social Worlds” addresses the increase in digitization and its resulting virtualization of processes, communication, environments, and finally of the human counterparts. The nature and the degree of virtualization vary significantly, and they depend considerably on the context of application. In addition, media-mediated communication is always restricted in comparison with real-world communication.
Our goal is to overcome the current constraints of media-mediated communication. In doing so, we will study which new ways of interaction and communication are offered by the connection of virtual and real social worlds in comparison with the experience of immediate real interaction and communication.
The research program subdivides the connection between virtual and real social environments into the fields of: communication, emotions, sensomotorics, and learning. Research in these areas is performed within interdisciplinary research tandems consisting of computer scientists and social scientists on a doctoral, postdoctoral, and on the supervisory level.
The qualification program is based on the objective of the Research Training Group, which is explicitly focused on joint technology-oriented and social-scientific-oriented media research. Seminars and workshops, some of them to be organized by the fellows, are focused on the research topics of the fellows. Furthermore, tutorials repare the fellows for the challenges of the national and international scientific community. The qualification program is completed by visits of designated guest scholars.