Klaus Krippendorff
Encyclopedia
Klaus Krippendorff Frankfurt am Main, is the Gregory Bateson
professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
, Philadelphia, USA.
. In 1961, he graduated as diplom-designer from the internationally famed avantgarde Ulm School of Design
(Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm), Germany. And in 1967, he received his Ph.D.
in communication
s from the pioneering Institut for Communication Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
.
Krippendorff started to work as an engineer and during the last year of his graduate study of design
he was a Research Assistant at the Institute for Visual Perception at the Ulm School of Design
. In 1961 he came to the United States with a two year Ford International Fellowship, first to Princeton University
but completing his second graduate education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
. In 1964, he joined the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania
, where he is a professor of communication.
He is or was a member of the editorial boards of some 20 academic journals, such as Communication and Information Science, Communication Research, Constructivist Foundations, Cybernetics & Human Knowing, International Journal of Cultural Studies and the Journal of Communication. He reviewed for many instutitutions and journals from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and Austrian, Israeli, and Swiss Science Foundations to The Sociological Quarterly, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal for Peace Research, the Management Communication Quarterly and the Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism.
In 1971, he was awarded an honorary MA from the University of Pennsylvania
. In the same year, he received an Award for "On Generating Data in Communication Research" as the most outstanding contribution to The Journal of Communication, published in 1970. In 1979, he became a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1982, fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA) in 1985, and fellow of the Japanese Society for Science and Design Studies in 1998.
In 2000, he became the Gregory Bateson
professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the Annenberg School for Communication. In 2001 he was awarded the Norbert Wiener Medal in Cybernetics in gold by the American Society for Cybernetics
for his contributions to cybernetics. Also in 2001, he received the ICA Fellows Book Award for his influential text Content Analysis, An Introduction to Its Methodology. In 2004, he received the Norbert Wiener/Hermann Schmidt Prize from the German Society for Cybernetics and German Society for Pedagogy and Information, at the University of Vienna.
Articles, a selection:
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...
professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, Philadelphia, USA.
Overview
Klaus Krippendorff was born in 1932 in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. In 1954, he graduated with an engineering degree from the State Engineering School HanoverHanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
. In 1961, he graduated as diplom-designer from the internationally famed avantgarde Ulm School of Design
Ulm School of Design
The Ulm School of Design was a college of design based in Ulm, Germany.Founded in 1953 by Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill, the latter being first Rector of the school and a former student at the Bauhaus. The HfG quickly gained international recognition and is now viewed as being second...
(Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm), Germany. And in 1967, he received his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
s from the pioneering Institut for Communication Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
.
Krippendorff started to work as an engineer and during the last year of his graduate study of design
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
he was a Research Assistant at the Institute for Visual Perception at the Ulm School of Design
Ulm School of Design
The Ulm School of Design was a college of design based in Ulm, Germany.Founded in 1953 by Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill, the latter being first Rector of the school and a former student at the Bauhaus. The HfG quickly gained international recognition and is now viewed as being second...
. In 1961 he came to the United States with a two year Ford International Fellowship, first to Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
but completing his second graduate education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
. In 1964, he joined the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania
Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania
The Annenberg School for Communication is the communications school at the University of Pennsylvania. The school was established in 1958 by Wharton School's alum Walter Annenberg as "The Annenberg School of Communications." The name was changed to its current title in the late 1980's.Walter...
, where he is a professor of communication.
He is or was a member of the editorial boards of some 20 academic journals, such as Communication and Information Science, Communication Research, Constructivist Foundations, Cybernetics & Human Knowing, International Journal of Cultural Studies and the Journal of Communication. He reviewed for many instutitutions and journals from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and Austrian, Israeli, and Swiss Science Foundations to The Sociological Quarterly, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal for Peace Research, the Management Communication Quarterly and the Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism.
In 1971, he was awarded an honorary MA from the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. In the same year, he received an Award for "On Generating Data in Communication Research" as the most outstanding contribution to The Journal of Communication, published in 1970. In 1979, he became a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1982, fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA) in 1985, and fellow of the Japanese Society for Science and Design Studies in 1998.
In 2000, he became the Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...
professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the Annenberg School for Communication. In 2001 he was awarded the Norbert Wiener Medal in Cybernetics in gold by the American Society for Cybernetics
American Society for Cybernetics
The American Society for Cybernetics is an American non-profit scholastic organization for organization for the advancement of cybernetics as a science and the interdisciplinary collaboration and synthesis of cybernetics. The society contributes to the cooperation around the research and...
for his contributions to cybernetics. Also in 2001, he received the ICA Fellows Book Award for his influential text Content Analysis, An Introduction to Its Methodology. In 2004, he received the Norbert Wiener/Hermann Schmidt Prize from the German Society for Cybernetics and German Society for Pedagogy and Information, at the University of Vienna.
Work
Klaus Krippendorff research interests span from epistemology to design:- Social constructivist epistemologyConstructivist epistemologyConstructivist epistemology is an epistemological perspective in philosophy about the nature of scientific knowledge. Constructivists maintain that scientific knowledge is constructed by scientists and not discovered from the world. Constructivists claim that the concepts of science are mental...
and second-order cyberneticsSecond-order cyberneticsSecond-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, investigates the construction of models of cybernetic systems. It investigates cybernetics with awareness that the investigators are part of the system, and of the importance of self-referentiality, self-organizing, the... - Mathematical foundations of cyberneticsCyberneticsCybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
, systems theory, communication and information theoriesInformation theoryInformation theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
, Structural models of qualitative data, and cyberspace - Social science methodology, especially Content analysisContent analysisContent analysis or textual analysis is a methodology in the social sciences for studying the content of communication. Earl Babbie defines it as "the study of recorded human communications, such as books, websites, paintings and laws."According to Dr...
- Reliability analysisInter-rater reliabilityIn statistics, inter-rater reliability, inter-rater agreement, or concordance is the degree of agreement among raters. It gives a score of how much homogeneity, or consensus, there is in the ratings given by judges. It is useful in refining the tools given to human judges, for example by...
, including Krippendorff's AlphaKrippendorff's AlphaKrippendorff's alpha coefficient is a statistical measure of the agreement achieved when coding a set of units of analysis in terms of the values of a variable... - Conversational and discursive approaches to the construction of reality
- Emancipatory theory and critical scholarshipScholarshipA scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
- Human-centered design principles for the information ageInformation AgeThe Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Digital Age, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
.
See also
- Krippendorff's AlphaKrippendorff's AlphaKrippendorff's alpha coefficient is a statistical measure of the agreement achieved when coding a set of units of analysis in terms of the values of a variable...
- Content analysisContent analysisContent analysis or textual analysis is a methodology in the social sciences for studying the content of communication. Earl Babbie defines it as "the study of recorded human communications, such as books, websites, paintings and laws."According to Dr...
- Social entropySocial entropySocial entropy is a macrosociological systems theory. It is a measure of the natural decay within a social system. It can refer to the decomposition of social structure or of the disappearance of social distinctions...
- SatisficingSatisficingSatisficing, a portmanteau "combining satisfy with suffice", is a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution...
- The Semantic TurnThe Semantic TurnThe semantic turn refers to a paradigm shift in the design of artifacts – industrial, graphic, informational, architectural, and social – from an emphasis on how artifacts ought to function to what they mean to those affected by them – semantics being a concern for meaning...
Publications
Klaus Krippendorff has published widely on cybernetics and systems theory, methodology in the social sciences, human communication, conversation, and discourse:. Among his major work is:- 1967, An Examination of Content Analysis: A Proposal for a Framework and an Information Calculus for Message Analytic Situations, Ph.D. Dissertation, Urbana: University of Illinois, 400 pp.
- 1970, "Bivariate agreement coefficients for reliability of data", in E. F. Borgatta: Sociological Methodology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 139–150.
- 1980, Content Analysis; An Introduction to its Methodology, Beverly Hills CA: Sage, 188 pp. (Translated into Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Hungarian)
- 1986, A Dictionary of Cybernetics, Norfolk VA: The American Society for Cybernetics.
- 1986, Information Theory: Structural Models for Qualitative Data, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 96 pp.
- 1989, Product Semantics. With R. Butter (Eds.) Design issues, 5.
- 1994, Design: A Discourse on Meaning; A Work Book, Philadelphia PA: University of the Arts.
- 1997, Design in the Age of Information, A Report to the National Science Foundation (NSF). http://repository.upenn.edu, 184 pp.
- 2006, The Semantic Turn; A New Foundation for DesignThe Semantic TurnThe semantic turn refers to a paradigm shift in the design of artifacts – industrial, graphic, informational, architectural, and social – from an emphasis on how artifacts ought to function to what they mean to those affected by them – semantics being a concern for meaning...
, New York: Taylor & Francis CRC, 349 pp. (Translated into Japanese) - 2008, The Content analysis Reader. With M. A. Bock (Eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 481 pp.
- 2009, On Communicating; Otherness, Meaning, and Information. F. Bermejo (Ed.). New York: Routledge, 372 pp.
Articles, a selection:
External links
- Klaus Krippendorff's Homepage at asc.upenn.edu
- Systems practice for managing complexity, International conference 15–17 July 2003, St Anne's College, Oxford.