How Technological and Societal Developments Shaped the Agenda of ASCoR

This chapter highlights characteristic lines of research in the 25-year history of the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) against the backdrop of key technological launches and changes in the media and communication landscape. We roughly distinguish four subsequent eras over the past 25 years. Each of the four eras, with their unique media developments and issues, gave rise to fundamental research questions that became part of ASCoR’s agenda. Our overview also shows the programmatic mission of ASCoR’s research throughout its history: The development of theories that help us understand the rapidly changing digital society, along with a strong emphasis on empirical research to explore, confirm, or disconfirm these theories.