Giving and Taking Advice between Self Improvement and external Improvement. Empirical Reconstructions of the Production and Reception of Advice Media

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ulf Sauerbrey
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 445185102

Advice media as offers for self- and external improvement are nearly omnipresent and offer various topics for lifestyle design. On the book market, on the Internet, in magazines and newspapers or on television, today there is a wide range of popularly prepared advice on education, teaching and learning at school, childlessness, pregnancy and childbirth, (baby) care, health, nutrition, sexuality, self-confidence, writing and much more. Historically, advice media have a long tradition, but in the course of the scientification and medialisation of human life in industrialised nations, the topics and forms of offer have clearly differentiated over the past decades. Advice media can be described as optimization media par excellence, because it addresses concrete practical questions, possible problems or deficits and offer advice seekers and others potentially interested in a topic immediate help and improvement of their respective situation. To which topics and in which forms advice media are produced or offered and by whom they are received, and how and for what purpose has so far only been empirically investigated selectively. The network starts with this desideratum. The main goal is to grasp the subjective perspectives of the recipients (advice taking) and the offers of the producers (advice giving) in order to expand the state of research with empirical findings on advice media, especially for parents, teachers and children as well as young people.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Nicole Vidal