Name Manfred Ruhl | ||
Manfred Ruhl (born 1933, Nurnberg) is a German professor emeritus for communications at the University of Bamberg, a leading communication theorist, an original and productive researcher in journalism and public relations.
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Overview
From 1956 onwards he studied economics, communications, sociology, political science, and philosophy at the University of Erlangen, Free University of Berlin, and Nurnberg College of Economics and Social Sciences. In 1960, he graduated with a diploma in economics at the Nurnberg College of Economics and Social Sciences. In 1968, he received a doctorate in social sciences, and in 1978, he qualified with a habilitation for communications, both at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
In 1964, Ruhl started to work as an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Political and Communication Sciences of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. From 1969 to 1970, with a postgraduate fellowship, he was Scholar in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication. He is or was Research Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (1971-1976), Associate Professor at the University of Hohenheim (1976-1983), and Full Professor at the University of Bamberg (since 1983), also frequently a visiting professor at the universities of Mainz and Zurich.
A founding member in 1963, Ruhl served as President of the DGPuK - Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft (1980-1982), and as a Member-at-Large at the Board of Directors, ICA - International Communication Association (1977-1980). He reviewed for many institutions and journals from DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, AvH - Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, DAAD - Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, SNSF - Swiss National Science Foundation to Publizistik, Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft, Journalism Quarterly, and Journal of Communication.
Manfred Ruhl's research interests span systems theory, comparative functionalism, communication theory, communication policy, public communication, journalism, public relations, organizational communication, and market communication. Communication systems have become one of the most popular, "non-normative" and "non-linear" theoretical models in contemporary communications. Ruhl's work marked a radical change in perspective, when he conducted since the 1960s empirical studies of journalism that focused on an organized social system instead of journalistic individuals, based on communication instead of action or behavior, but on communication as a reality that occurs within differing systems and environments. Within his reference theoretical framework, public]] communication is studied as applied organizational communication, market communication, and societal communication as journalism, public relations, and other systems of persuasion and manipulation. In the course of recent decades, many scholars, particularly in the German speaking countries adapted his approaches and developed them further.