University of Erfurt graduates honoured with "medius" young talent award

The prize for young academics is endowed with a total of 3,000 euros and honours academic and practice-oriented theses from German-speaking countries that deal with current aspects of the media sector, media studies, media education and media literacy or topics relating to the protection of minors in the media.

The 1st prize, endowed with 1,500 euros, went to Michelle Piorek, a graduate of the University of Erfurt, for her master's thesis "Spiritual TikTok videos and their appropriation by adolescents". In it, she analyses a media phenomenon that has hardly been researched to date: the presentation of spiritual content on the social media platform TikTok and its appropriation by adolescents. The starting point is the increasing media attention for so-called "modern" or "popular" spirituality, which is particularly present on TikTok, but at the same time has only been marginally considered in media pedagogy and empirical research. Against this background, Michelle Piorek is pursuing the goal of analysing both the topics and the design of spiritual content on TikTok as well as the use, perception and processing of this content by adolescents.

The third prize, endowed with 500 euros, also went to a graduate of the University of Erfurt: In her master's thesis "Between nostalgic everyday culture, political self-positioning and social commitment - negotiating an East German identity among adolescents and young people on TikTok and Instagram", Sophie Lindner investigated the extent to which adolescents and young people construct and negotiate an East German identity on TikTok and Instagram and how they appropriate an "East German identity" in the context of follow-up communication. The starting point was the observation that young people born after German reunification explicitly refer to East Germany on social media and position themselves as East German.

Dr Friederike von Gross, Co-Managing Director of the GMK, explained at the award ceremony: "The work addresses current social, media and political developments and impressively demonstrates how scientific research can contribute to a differentiated understanding of young people's digital worlds and develop practical impulses for media education, social work and democracy education."

Congratulations to our award winners!