Communication environments are primarily geared towards exchange and interaction. In these environments, knowledge is often acquired incidentally. Content comes from both experts and laypeople. Aside from verifiable facts, personal opinions, unintentional misinformation, and deliberate disinformation can also be found. The IWM investigates how people perceive, evaluate, and disseminate information in such dynamic and sometimes “noisy” environments.
The focus is on, among other things:
The Multimodal Interaction lab conducts research into the interaction of digital information on the basis of different sensory and motoric modalities. The focus is on the multimodal handling of multiple information resources and on the use of sensor-based interaction modalities, such as multi touch or brain-computer interfaces.
The Realistic Depictions lab focuses on the processes underlying information processing and knowledge acquisition when viewing vivid static and dynamic visualizations, such as illustrations, videos or virtual environments.
In the Aesthetics and Learning lab, we aim to understand how aesthetic experiences can be a source of learning and what can be learned from aesthetic experience. The lab takes a blended approach that aims to transfer findings from controlled experimental laboratory settings to ecologically valid real-life informal learning settings with a particular focus on museums.
The Perception and Action lab investigates processes of human perception and action in digital knowledge environments. These environments are often dynamic (e.g. educational videos), agentic/social (allowing interaction with human and digital agents), and noisy (e.g., containing misinformation and opposing opinions).
The research of the Knowledge Construction lab focuses on media settings in which groups work together on a joint knowledge artefact (e.g., a knowledge platform). In these settings, knowledge is usually not exchanged directly between users but via the artefact (the media platform) and the processes that take place there. In such situations, new knowledge develops at both the individual and the group levels.
The Everyday Media lab analyses how knowledge is communicated in everyday situations. That includes the use of social media, e.g., skimming social media feeds containing news or professionally relevant information, or learning with YouTube videos. The lab is also researching human–machine communication, and in particular interactions with communicative artificial intelligence (AI): voice assistants such as Alexa and AI-driven chatbots such as ChatGPT.