Bernhard is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tübingen. His research focuses on the mechanisms, dynamics, and conflicts of media communication and public discourse. Bernhard has written or co-authored books on topics such as communication theory, journalism education, cybernetics, systemic thinking, and constructivist epistemology. His current research projects and areas of interest are: 1) the dynamics of outrage in the digital age – with the goal to develop a theoretical-analytical framework to study the reorganization of scandal in a networked world; 2) concepts of media literacy for the digital age – presuming that the maxims of quality journalism (scepticism, a sense of proportion, two-source rule, audiatur et altera pars, striving for transparency, etc.) contain a practical ethics of communication and should become an element of general education in a future “editorial society”; 3) public conflict dynamics from a communication psychology perspective – trying to show how models of communication psychology (micro-level) can be used to de-escalate public communication (meso and macro perspectives).

Bernhard will join THE NEW INSTITUTE in the Academic Year 2024/25 as an individual fellow.