Information für die Wissenschaft Nr. 80 | 29. Oktober 2018

Possibility for German-American Collaboration within SSRC’s Media & Democracy Program

DFG programme “Initiation of International Cooperation” for cooperation with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is an independent, international, non-profit organisation devoted to the advancement of interdisciplinary research in the social sciences through a wide variety of workshops and conferences, fellowships and grants, summer training institutes, scholarly exchanges, research, and publications.

The Media & Democracy program at the SSRC encourages academic research, practitioner reflection, and public debate on all aspects of the close relationship between media and democracy. Media & Democracy asks, for example, how recent transformations in journalism have affected democratic discourse and participation. Conversely, the program also examines how changes in the political landscape, such as increasing polarisation, have affected the media. The program takes a wide definition of media (including but not limited to news and journalism) and looks at various aspects of democracy.

Other SSRC programs, such as the Social Data Initiative — which examines social media’s impact on society and explores questions about the responsible use of social network data through a pilot grant program offering access to Facebook data – inform the Council’s broad approach to media, technology, and democracy.

Researchers eligible for DFG funding have the opportunity to liaise with the SSRC’s Media & Democracy program to organise joint conferences, make connections with North American scholars with similar interests, and build international scholarly networks.

In order to establish a basis for a joint research initiative between German researchers and their North American colleagues, researchers being eligible at DFG can submit joint international proposals within the regular funding instrument “Initiation of International Cooperation”, which could for example be used to apply for exploratory workshops (alone or in combination with guest visits in either direction).

The submission of proposals for the initiation of an international collaboration is possible at any time.

Proposals should be written in English and must be submitted via the DFG elan system according to the guidelines for the programme “Initiation of International Collaboration” (DFG form 1.813). It is important for DFG applicants to note that there are no special funds available for these efforts, proposals must succeed on the strengths of their intellectual merit and teams in competition with all other proposals in the respective DFG funding scheme.

Further Information

More information on the SSRC Media & Democracy program: