Daniela Stoltenberg, research assistant at the Communication Theory and Media Effects Research Unit and the Collaborative Research Center 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces", has been awarded the Dissertation Award of the German Society for Journalism and Communication Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, DGPuK). The prize, which is awarded every two years, recognizes outstanding dissertations that make an important contribution to the field. It was awarded on March 14 as part of the DGPuK annual conference in Erfurt. The laudatory speech was given by Prof. Dr. Julia Metag, chair of the selection committee.

In her dissertation with the title "Issue-Spatiality and Socio-Spatial Inequality", Daniela Stoltenberg addresses the question of the "where" of digital public spheres: Which places are talked about in urban political discourses in social media, which spatial patterns emerge in the process and to what extent are these driven by the resources and infrastructures available on the ground? To answer these questions, she brings together interdisciplinary research and theory from the fields of the public sphere, social inequality and spatial sociology. She is able to show that attention is highly concentrated in the urban center and in places with a high density of civil society organizations. The urban periphery and places characterized by poverty and old age are barely visible.

The laudatory speech particularly praised the interdisciplinary nature of the work, the complex methodological design and the new perspective on space for the research field. The dissertation was written in the context of the Research Training Group of the SFB 1265. It was recently published in revised form by Routledge under the title "The Spaces of Public Issues".