Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society

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https://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/25

The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society is an interdisciplinary, free open access journal that investigates processes of digitalization in society from the perspectives of different research areas.

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Making Choices Rational: The Elective Affinity of Artificial Intelligence and Organizational Decision-Making
(Weizenbaum Institute, 18-10-2024) Meyer, Uli; Werner, René
This article investigates the elective affinity between decision-making models in the fields of organizational theory and artificial intelligence (AI), exploring the decision-making influence of societal ideas in these two research contexts. Using Herbert Simon’s work on organizations and AI as an example, we examine the properties of these societal ideas and identify six key characteristics, emphasizing rational calculations based on a logic of consequences. These specific notions of decision-making converge again in the phenomenon of AI-based algorithmic decision-making in organizations, as we demonstrate using examples from descriptions and advertisements of such systems, the current literature on their use, and empirical research concerning organizational practices.
Editorial: Volume 4, Issue 3
(Weizenbaum Institute, 23-10-2024) Emmer, Martin; Iglesias Keller, Clara; Krasnova, Hanna; Krzywdzinski, Martin; Metzger, Axel; Schimmler, Sonja; Ulbricht, Lena; Vladova, Gergana
This issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society addresses the increasing prevalence of algorithmic management in both business and public administration. This subject is the focus of vigorous debate across sociology, law, political science, and economics. The articles featured in this issue not only analyse the historical foundations of this practice but also examine its manifestations in various contexts, extending beyond the gig economy to encompass other industries.
International Regulation of Platform Labor. A Proposal for Action
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2021) Fredman, Sandra; Du Toit, Darcy; Graham, Mark; Vadekkethil, Aradhana Cherupara; Bhatia, Gautam; Bertolini, Alessio
Platform-mediated work is a source of livelihood for millions of workers worldwide. However, because platforms typically classify workers as ‘independent contractors’, those workers are generally excluded from the scope of labor rights. This has a corrosive effect on working standards of platform workers, creating the need for an international regulatory framework to prevent a race to the bottom. To address this situation, the article proposes an outline for an International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention for the regulation of platform work going beyond the employee/independent contractor dichotomy. It identifies five core issues in the platform economy – low pay, poor working conditions, inaccessible and unreasonable contracts, unfair management, and a lack of representation – and demonstrates how existing ILO standards could be adapted to address these issues. The proposals are informed by the evidence collected by the Fairwork project through its participatory and multidisciplinary research.
Reshaping the Legal Categories of Work. Digital Labor Platforms at the Borders of Labor Law
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2021) Kocher, Eva
The article questions the fundamental paradigms of labor law in view of the challenges presented by digital platform work. It uses heuristic methods, namely legal doctrine and labor law theory, to show how legal concepts of em-ployment have been informed by organization theory. It proposes taking les-sons from organizational analyses of market organizing that have already ad-dressed new organizational forms with some precision. This approach would facilitate the development of a consistent and effective regulatory design for digital labor platforms. The design would include two levels: First, regulation should modify the criteria and indicators for classifying workers, either in the employment category or in a new category, to capture indirect mechanisms of worker control such as feedback and rating systems. Second, the rights and obligations associated with labor law, as well as the participation and gover-nance structures, should be reformulated to address indirect control and the social dynamics of virtual workplaces.
Multidimensional Digital Inequalities. Theoretical Framework, Empirical Investigation, and Policy Implications of Digital Inequalities among Older Adults
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2021) Friemel, Thomas N.; Frey, Tobias; Seifert, Alexander
Older adults represent the fastest-growing age group in the global north and are among the most affected by digital inequality. This study investigates the most important factors related with Internet use among older adults in Switzerland. Hereby, the individual context (i.e., gender, age, education, income, preretirement PC use) is found to be responsible for Internet access and frequency of use, while the support by an individual’s social context is related with inequalities regarding skills, diversity of use, and beneficial outcomes. Our theoretical framework suggests a systematic typology of four distinct relationships between dimensions of inequality. Empirical evidence for maintaining (e.g., income), reinforcing (e.g., age), mitigating (e.g., gender), and modifying relationships (e.g., encouragement by friends and family) support this framework and implications for future research and policy interventions are discussed. It becomes evident that the relationships between the dimensions are crucial for any setting in which digital inequalities are found on multiple dimensions. Given the steady innovation of new technologies and online services, the relevance of a multidimensional perspective is likely to increase.
Platform Matters. Political Opinion Expression on Social Media
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2021) Mitchelstein, Eugenia; Boczkowski, Pablo; Giuliano, Camila
This study examines political opinion expression on four social media platforms in Argentina (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp). Drawing on in-depth interviews (N=158) and a survey (N= 700), it examines divergent dynamics of political conversation across platforms, and finds that respondents use platforms in different ways to talk about current affairs. Political discussion practices vary according to shared understandings regarding the content perceived as appropriate and level of privacy attributed to each platform, but not according to socio demographic characteristics. This comparative cross-platform approach indicates that political talk on social media is shaped by: a) the political context; b) each platform’s uptake; and, c) the overlapping of private and public, non-political and political content in a single space. Combining interviews with a survey allows this research to account for both differences in the level of political talk across platforms and the interpretation that underlie these differences. In the polarized Argentine context, online incivility is perceived to be common, and users employ diverging strategies to talk about politics on different platforms. We draw upon these findings to reflect on how varying user practices contribute to understanding social media platforms as culturally distinct spaces.
Editorial: Volume 1, Issue 1
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2021) Emmer, Martin; Krasnova, Hanna; Krzywdzinski, Martin; Metzger, Axel; Schimmler, Sonja; Ulbricht, Lena; Neuberger, Christoph
The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society is an open access journal and could not function any other way, because we see digitalization as a process that changes traditional forms of communication and cooperation, which raises the questions of control of data, information and knowledge anew. We look forward to contributions about the conditions, forms and consequences of the digitalization of society and its sub-sectors such as politics, business, science, labor, the public, civil society, law and culture. The digitalization of society has many facets: the disruptive transformation of the world of work, radical changes in the economic and innovation systems, new forms of learning and the restructuring of educational systems, the transformation of public space through digital media and platforms, changes in the way democracies function, massive challenges for the legal system and the planning and design of technical infrastructures. In light of these developments, the question arises as to how social actors can shape the digital transformation while safeguarding the foundations for individual and societal self-determination.
Following the Beaten Track?
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) König, Tim; Schünemann, Wolf; Nijmeijer, Rolf
Information operations, which are considered part of information warfare, feature prominently in contemporary debates on the quality of democracy, international relations, and the national security of highly connected democracies. However, the vectors of attack and success conditions for information warfare remain unclear, as well as the strategic motivations of malevolent actors. Alarmist voices in public debate and scholarly discourse often build their assumptions on atomistic and individualistic misconceptions of knowledge. In this paper, we introduce a perspective based on the sociology of knowledge. We utilize this framework with a mix of quantitative and qualitative text analysis methods and present a comparative study of news coverage during the 2019 European election campaigns in two countries, Germany and France. We contrast the news stream of RT (formerly Russia Today), an outlet widely perceived as a vehicle for Russian information operations, with two types of established media per case: quality press and tabloid. Results show that RT, while generally following the beaten track of public discourse, particularly emphasizes international affairs topics in its news coverage. For these subjects, we find divergent framing seeking to support Russian foreign interests in comparison with established news outlets.
Coordinating Digital Transformation: The Discursive Context of Production in the Knowledge Economy
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Rothstein, Sidney
This article introduces the concept of the “discursive context of production” in order to explain how the transition to the knowledge economy affects working conditions. Past episodes of economic adjustment saw national institutions in corporatist countries protect working conditions by facilitating coordination between employers and workers in the workplace. Where workers had the capacity to enforce these institutions, they succeeded, for instance, in defending against mass layoffs. Digital transformation, however, has led managers to adopt the market discourse of the knowledge economy, which allows them to dissuade workers from mobilizing. With their mechanisms for enforcement undermined, national institutions are less effective in protecting workers from employer discretion, thereby exposing them to the threat of job loss during economic adjustment. Relying on a case study of mass layoffs at a technology firm in Germany, this article uses process tracing to illustrate how discourse constitutes an important contextual feature that conditions the causal linkage between digital transformation and the ineffectiveness of national institutions. Understanding how digital transformation affects working conditions requires tracing how discursive change in the workplace reconfigures power relations between managers and workers.
Toward a Socioeconomic Company-Level Theory of Automation at Work
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Krzywdzinski, Martin
The current understanding of automation is dominated by “routine-biased technological change” (RBTC). This theory predicts a strong automation dynamic in jobs with high routine-task share and a polarization of employment structures. While RBTC theory has many merits, this paper develops a systematic critique of the theory and a counter-proposal of a socioeconomically grounded company-level theory of the automation of work. It distinguishes between feasibility conditions of automation, technology choices, and social outcomes. With regard to feasibility conditions, the relevant factor is not routine-task intensity but the interaction between product architecture (product complexity) and process complexity. Which technology choices are made in this feasibility space is in turn influenced by companies’ profit strategies and power relations between management and labor. The social outcomes of automation depend on these technology choices, but also on managerial strategies pursued in the restructuring of organizational roles and skills. These managerial strategies are shaped by national institutional systems.
The Emergence of Platform Regulation in the UK
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Kretschmer, Martin; Furgał, Ula; Schlesinger, Philip
Online platforms have emerged as a new kind of regulatory object. In this article, we empirically map the emergence of the field of platform regulation in one country: the United Kingdom (UK). We focus on the 18-month period between September 2018 and February 2020 when an upsurge of regulatory activism reflected increasing sensitivity to national sovereignty in the context of Brexit. Through an empirical–legal content analysis of eight official reports issued by the UK government, parliamentary committees, and regulatory agencies, we code the online harms to which regulation is being asked to respond; identify relevant subject domains of law (such as data protection and privacy, competition, education, media and broadcasting, consumer protection, tax law and financial regulation, intellectual property law, security law); and analyze the agencies referred in the reports for their centrality in the regulatory network and their regulatory powers. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of “field,” we observe the emergence of regulators with investigatory and enforcement powers that stand in mutually unstable power relations to each other as well as vis-à-vis shifting executive and legislative interventions. Online platforms appear to acquire authority to exercise state powers.
Content Moderation and the Quest for Democratic Legitimacy
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Fichtner, Laura
The paper analyzes the public controversy incited by the introduction of the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) in Germany. This law obliges social media platforms to delete unlawful content from their sites and has received international attention as a regulatory blueprint for governing corporate content moderation. The paper describes different ways in which NetzDG was framed in German media reporting, which offered distinct assessments of whether the new law endangered or supported democratic principles and values. Major differences in the public controversy over NetzDG revolved around, for instance, what freedom of expression and the rule of law meant for content moderation and how NetzDG’s regulatory intervention would interact with platforms. The paper finds that a major point of contention thus concerned how to ground content moderation practices and policies in democratic legitimacy. Its analysis demonstrates that the governance of content moderation on social media platforms can open up a site for renegotiating democratic values and principles. As the NetzDG case shows, this can happen without substantively challenging existing laws but by raising the question of how to legitimately apply them to platforms. At stake in this controversy were the underlying logics by which to govern speech online. Different perspectives on this built on distinct understandings of democracy, attributing particular roles and responsibilities to platforms, state institutions, and users. Thus, the paper illuminates that the public controversy over NetzDG, and over the right way to uphold speech laws on platforms, concerned more fundamental questions about the shape of democracy and the distribution of power, agency, and responsibility.
Counter-Hegemonic Neoliberalism
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Staab, Philipp; Sieron, Sandra; Piétron, Dominik
The platforms that hold the power in the digital economy, and the politics that surround them, are a central topic in contemporary political economy. The EU is widely perceived as a digital laggard, as it is home to very few leading digital corporations, and it is exposed to the market hegemony of the Big Tech platforms. Moreover, the EU is often considered the pioneer of digital regulation, and its platform politics have gained momentum as the EU Commission has unleashed a swathe of new regulatory initiatives, ranging from competition policies to governance of digital content, data flows and platform work. In this essay, we treat platform control and regulation as a matter of contested market design. We offer an analysis of the recent stream of EU platform regulation, questioning how it relates to the historical trajectory of the platform economy and established path dependencies within the EU. We argue that it is characterized by a critical approach to the power of digital platforms and a continuation of negative integration in the EU, and we suggest that it should be understood as a manifestation of counter-hegemonic neoliberalism, as it essentially enforces market-based governance of society through political market design.
Who Can Still Afford to Do Digital Activism?
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Pierri, Paola
Digital activism is now considered a widespread form of activism. Studies on its impact and use have proliferated. Most research into this phenomenon has tended to analyze the impact of digital technologies on action and activism. In contrast, this study explores the role of organizations and organizational structures, focusing on internal processes and the functioning of digital campaigning. Based on ethnographic observation and interviews with staff of online campaigning organizations, this paper presents findings on how digital communication and its logic can affect the organization’s internal processes. The paper challenges two established ideas: a) the idea of de-materialization of organizational structures from digital activism; b) that digital platforms tend to support the dissemination of opinions of previously marginalized actors. My fieldwork’s findings demonstrate that the reality in both cases is far more nuanced, with significant identifiable inconsistencies. This research shows that organizations and organizational structures have not de-materialized and that the material conditions of digital activism are key to better understanding this phenomenon and new forms of inequality it might generate.
Editorial: Volume 2, Issue 1
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Emmer, Martin; Krasnova, Hanna; Krzywdzinski, Martin; Metzger, Axel; Schimmler, Sonja; Ulbricht, Lena
This second issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society brings together four contributions that examine the role of actors and regulation in processes of digitalization from the perspective of different disciplines. The topics include the role of the Silicon Valley discourse on entrepreneurship in legitimizing a specific model of work in the IT industry, the particularities of the European platform regulation approach, the development and enforcement problems of copyright liability regulation in Germany, and the development and regulation of automation processes in the workplace.
Coming into Force, not Coming into Effect?
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2022) Brieske, Jasmin; Peukert, Alexander
The EU legislator responded to the challenges of the digital transformation and the increase of online communication with Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market (CDSMD), which intends to establish a legal framework for the use of copyright and related rights in the online environment. Germany transposed art 17 CDSMD through a new Act on the Copyright Liability of Online Content Sharing Service Providers (OCSSP Act), which entered into force on August 1, 2021. This paper examines whether the terms and conditions and other publicly accessible copyright policies of eight services (i.e., YouTube, Rumble, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and Pinterest) changed upon the entry into force of the OCSSP Act. For this purpose, we reviewed and analyzed the relevant German-language websites of the services four times between July 2021 and November 2021. Our data collection reveals few changes in the terms and conditions of platforms over time but significant differences between the services in relation to their use of content recognition technology. The concluding section discusses the implications of these findings for the future of copyright policy in the EU.
The European Strive for Digital Sovereignty: Have We Lost Our Belief in the Global Promises of the ‘Free and Open Internet’?
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2023) Pohle, Julia
Digital sovereignty is the buzzword of the hour in European digital policy debates. But what if it was something more fundamental than just a new policy principle? This short essay analyses shifts in the belief system that underlies our idea of the global Internet in order to better understand the European digital sovereignty debate within its historical and political context. For this purpose, it identifies three different types of dependency that shape today’s global digital order and explains how the perceptions of these dependencies motivate the EU’s claims for more digital self-determination. What come apparent is that the liberal imaginary of an ‘open and free Internet’ could not hold up to reality and that we are in urgent need of alternative visions for a globally interconnected world. The European digital sovereignty debate can be interpreted as the first stage in the search for such an alternative. Whether it will be able to fill the gap, remains questionable.
Algorithmic Governmentality, Digital Sovereignty, and Agency Affordances: Extending the Possible Fields of Action
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2023) Pop Stefanija, Ana; Pierson, Jo
In today’s socio-technical constellations, our daily online and offline lives are increasingly governed by what can be termed algorithmic governmentality. Understood as the governing of the social based on the algorithmic processing of big data, algorithmic governmentality significantly limits human agency and individuals’ abilities to control data inputs and algorithmic outputs. An antidote and a solution to governance of this kind require assembling conditions for enabling digital sovereignty. Seen as a counter-conduct to governmentality, sovereignty concerns agency, control, autonomy, authority, self-reflection, and self-determination. Foregrounded on empirical research that relates specifically to platform algorithms, this article discusses the requirements for the digital sovereignty of individuals and the socio-technical conditions that should enable that sovereignty. By introducing and conceptualizing the notion of agency affordances, the article provides several illustrative examples of how this sovereignty can be inscribed through the technical and unfold via the societal.
Posting from the Past
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2023) Frentzel-Beyme, Lea; Holtze, Merle; Szczuka, Jessica M.; Krämer, Nicole
Historical figures have been increasingly brought into the Instagram world, providing insights into the past from a first-person perspective by addressing followers in stories or posts. This type of representation promotes the parasocial interaction (PSI) that creates the illusion of a face-to-face interaction with a media figure. This suggests the possibility that historical Instagram accounts might offer a novel platform for history education.
The Limits of Computation: Joseph Weizenbaum and the ELIZA Chatbot
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2023) Berry, David M.
Developed in the 1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum, ELIZA is arguably among the most influential computer programs ever written. ELIZA – and especially its most famous persona DOCTOR – continues to inspire programmers, wider discussions about AI, and imitations. This original ancestor of all conversa-tional interfaces and chatbots maintains a special fascination for engineers, historians, and philosophers of artificial intelligence (AI) and computing. With its ability to produce human-like responses using a relatively small amount of computer code, ELIZA has paved the way for a multitude of similar programs. These take the form of conversation agents and other human-computer inter-faces that have inspired entire new fields of study within computer science. This paper examines Weizenbaum’s contribution to AI and considers his more critical writings in the context of contemporary developments in generative AI, such as ChatGPT. Examining how ELIZA has been discussed can provide insights into current debates surrounding machine learning and AI.

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