Proceedings of the Weizenbaum Conference 2019: Challenges of Digital Inequality

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An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Data Culture and Vocational Training
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Etsiwah, Bennet; Hecht, Stefanie; Hilbig, Romy
In this interdisciplinary paper we discuss the intersection of organizational data culture and vocational education and training (VET). Building on a preliminary definition of data culture and an explorative analysis of data-related value propositions in the German VET market, we analyze how VET providers address organizational challenges in the wake of big data and digitization that affect many of today’s organizations, regardless of their traditional industry. We argue that if organizations want to implement a data culture, their employees have to receive appropriate trainings that convey relevant skills and competencies.
Big Data: Inequality by Design?
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Prietl, Bianca
This paper proposes to tackle the problem of digital inequality by introducing digital technologies of knowledge generation and decision-making to a feminist critique of rationality that is informed by discourse theory and intersectional perspectives on gender and gendered relations of inequality. Therefore, it takes a closer look at the epistemological foundations of Big Data as one prominent representation of digital technologies. While Big Data and Big Data-based results and decisions are generally believed to be objective and neutral, numeral cases of algorithmic discrimination have lately begged to differ. This paper argues that algorithmic discrimination is neither random nor accidental; on the contrary, it is - amongst others - the result of the epistemological foundation of Big Data - namely: data fundamentalism, post-explanatory anticipatory pragmatics, and anti-political solutionism. As a consequence, a critical engagement with the concepts and premises that become materialized in the design of digital technologies is needed, if they are not to silently (re)produce social inequalities.
Challenges of Online Participation: Digital Inequality in Party-Internal Processes
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Thuermer, Gefion
Parties adopt online participation methods in the hope of engaging a wider group of participants. However, literature on the digital divide suggests that this is unlikely to happen, as online participa-tion remains dependent on the same factors as offline participation: income, class, education. Based on a mixed methods study of members of the Green Party Germany, this paper discusses the expected and actual effects of online participation tools on the participation of party members. Expectations are that these tools will benefit nearly everyone, but in practice, the goal to engage inactive members is only partially achieved: Younger members and those with lower educational attainments are mo-bilised, but women are not. These effect differ depending on the type of technology. I argue that this is an expression of the prevailing digital divide, which needs to consider not only a socio-demo-graphic divisions, but also the multifaceted effects of different technologies.
Citizen Science and the Dissolution of Inequalities in Scientific Knowledge Production
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Wünsche, Hannes; Schimmler, Sonja
Recently, a larger public has started to critically discuss scientific knowledge and its role in political decision making. In this discussion, scientific and civic epistemologies are put into connection with each other. Just as post-democratic theory argues in relation to political decisions, the production of scientific knowledge is criticized as a non-inclusive process, too. The Citizen Science movement tries to resolve this deficit by involving citizens into research. In this paper, we introduce agency as an analytical category into the discussion, focussing on how participants are represented in Citizen Science. We highlight the interdependencies between the degree of agency granted to the participants in Citizen Science projects and the degree of their representation in knowledge production.
Digital Platforms and Digital Inequality. An Analysis From Information Ethics Perspective
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Levina, Olga
Digital platforms are information technology artifacts that erode established market structures by providing a digital interaction space for producers and consumers. Therefore, it is argued here that digital platforms inherently support digital divide. This potential, if not governed or made visible for the involved actors, can lead and is already leading to undesired societal and ethical consequences. To derive these insights, Information Systems (IS) perspective is enriched with the Information Ethics approach and terminology. This interdisciplinary view allows considering both the technical and the social side of the problem. The analysis of interactions and roles is performed using the four ethical issues identified by Mason as a general taxonomy of ethical concerns in IS context. The identified aspects offer insights on the potentials of digital platforms that fosters digital inequality. Power asymmetries between the digital platform and its users are identified, outlining their potential for manifestation of the digital divide.
Exploration into Qualification Transformation of Employees Working with Decision-support-systems
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Junker, Judith
The introduction of new information and communication technology (ICT) in the company is often associated with the need for new qualifications and skills as well as different fields of activity and responsibility for the employees. Studies have shown a skill-biased digital divide in certain fields of ICT. In this study, trend scenarios of qualification requirements of workers using decision-support-systems (DSS) were evaluated in four different sectors: civil protection, energy management, plant maintenance, hospital- and operating room management. The results show either an increase in complex tasks or a shift to distinctively different areas of activity for workers affected by the use of DSS, especially in cases where management decisions lead to the reorganization of workers.
Framing Computational Thinking for Computational Literacies in K-12 Education
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Kafai, Yasmin B.; Proctor, Chris; Lui, Debora A.
The last decade has seen an increased interest in promoting computing education for all, focused on the idea of “computational thinking.” Currently, three framings for promoting computational thinking in K-12 education have been proposed, emphasizing either (1) skill and competency building, (2) creative expression and participation, or (3) social justice and reflection. While each of these emphases is valuable and needed, their narrow focus can obscure important issues and miss critical transformational opportunities for empowering students as competent, creative, and critical agents. We argue that these computational framings should be seen as literacies, thereby historicizing and situating computer science with respect to broader educational concerns and providing new directions for how schools can help students to actively participate in designing their digital futures.
Growing Open Science with the Combined Potential of Citizen Science and Auto Science
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Schimmler, Sonja; Kirstein, Fabian; Urbanek, Sebastian; Wünsche, Hannes; Hauswirth, Manfred
In this paper, we present our ideas on how to best support researchers in every phase of the research process when dealing with their research data. We propose a Research Data Portal as the central data infrastructure. With the help of this portal, a researcher can easily manage and update his or her research data, share it with collaborators, and reach out to the public. We further propose a Citizen Science Portal, which includes some new and innovative concepts and methods. In this portal, Citizen Science and Auto Science concepts are applied, and support to bring together the best of both worlds is provided. Citizen Science promises to entail the individual (scientists and hobby scientists) to help with research. Auto Science is meant to help analyze research data, e.g., to help publish the data and to help improve its quality, by applying methods from artificial intelligence.
How Privacy Concerns and Social Media Platform Use Affect Online Political Participation in Germany
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Lutz, Christoph; Hoffmann, Christian
Digital inequalities research has investigated who engages in online political participation, finding gaps along socioeconomic variables such as gender and education. Recent research has also highlighted how online platforms may facilitate political participation. Especially for multi-purpose platforms such as Facebook, where users are supposed to use their real names, issues of adequate self-presentation arise. The diversity of multiple audiences engenders privacy concerns, particularly when controversial political issues are discussed. We add to existing research on digital inequalities by focusing on privacy concerns as a critical construct. Using a survey of German Internet users, we test the effect of privacy concerns on online political participation. Unexpectedly, privacy concerns increase political participation. As privacy concerns are spread evenly throughout the population, they contribute little to the socioeconomic stratification of online political participation. Social media use, however, exerts a strong positive effect on political participation, and differs significantly among socioeconomic groups.
Human/machine Learning: Becoming Responsible for Learning Cultures of Digital Technologies
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Treusch, Pat
This paper centrally asks for the ways in which ubiquitous, ever new digital technologies of 'our' everyday lives transform learning at the digital human-machine interface from the perspective of feminist science and technology studies. How to account for emerging forms of interwoven human and machine learning? Suggesting the term of learning cultures in approaching this question, the paper emphasizes an understanding of learning not as a proficiency of an entity embodying either natural or artificial intelligence, but rather as a culturally situated and materially enacted process. In so doing, the paper brings together recent impulses that suggest a re-conceptualization of learning, e.g. through the notion of "machine learners" (Mackenzie 2017) or that of "posthuman learning (Hasse 2018)". Reading these insights together, I will finally suggest an account of becoming responsible for learning cultures of digital technologies through a reconsidered notion of interwoven human/machine learning.
Inclusive Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the New Digital Era
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Allen, Jonathan P.
The intensive digitization of society has coincided with rising economic inequality across the developed economies. Missing from the standard list of policy responses to rising inequality is the role of innovation and entrepreneurship. This paper argues that new digital business models, that capture value differently and share the wealth created more broadly, will be a necessary part of addressing technology-based inequality. This in turn will require more support for inclusive innovation and entrepreneurship, which will allow novel, alternative value models to emerge, and be given a chance to compete and succeed. Using a three-part model of the main modes of performance in the digital era - datafication, algorithms, and platforms - the paper will discuss skills and intervention that might help in making digital innovation and entrepreneurship more inclusive.
Inequalities of Professional Learning on Social Media Platforms
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Bergviken Rensfeldt, Annika; Hillman, Thomas
Professional learning on social media is generally framed as unproblematic, but the transition to these platforms marks a change as professionals’ work is conditioned by their logic and economy. In this paper, our focus is how problematic inequalities of teachers’ professional learning around access, participation and resources are produced as their professional exchanges is formed by social media participation. Three aspects of inequality have been examined. First, the performance of teachers’ (un)equal professional opportunities; second, (un)equal access to resources; and third, (un)equal existential opportunities for professional development. We draw on examination of three-years of API data from a large teacher Facebook-group asking, who can participate (gender, location), what voices are heard (status, language), and how does the social media platform condition professional exchange and participation? Our results consider the opportunities and costs for teachers as individuals, professionals and intellectuals. They reveal problematic temporal aspects such as work intensification, and limited professional exchange, partly conditioned by the platform functionality.
Inequality Is the Name of the Game: Thoughts on the Emerging Field of Technology, Ethics and Social Justice
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Sloane, Mona
This paper argues that the hype around ‘ethics’ as panacea for remedying algorithmic discrimination is a smokescreen for carrying on with business as usual. First, it analyses how the current discourses around digital innovation and algorithmic technologies (including artificial intelligence or AI), newly emerging technology policy and governmental funding patterns as well as global industry developments are currently re-configured around ‘ethical’ considerations. Here, the paper shows how this phenomenon can be broken down into policy approaches and technological approaches. Second, it sets out to provide three pillars for a sociological framework that can help reconceptualize the algorithmic harm and discrimination as an issue of social inequality, rather than ethics. Here, it builds on works on data classification, human agency in design and intersectional inequality. To conclude, the paper suggests three pragmatic steps that should be taken in order to center social justice in technology policy and computer science education.
Influence of Informatization on Working Activites in the Information Technology Business - an Approach for an Analysis Framework of Labor Capacity
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Linke, Knut; Von Zobeltitz, André
The effects of the digitization of the work provide companies and educational institutions uncertainty. Therefore new future working skills of employees will be necessary. This applies in particular to those employees in the field of information technology who are particularly affected by digitization and who mostly perform on the technologically cutting edge of information technology. The practical part of this article aims to present an analysis model which explores the work activities of IT specialists through quantitative and qualitative analysis methods and shows which informal skills are placed in the work activities of the employees. A methodological triangulation should enable a multi-layered view of work activity. The developed framework will be discussed during the conference contribution in order to enable reflection and improvement of the approach with the aim of enabling a good practice for other researchers.
Media Bias Towards African-americans Before and After the Charlottesville Rally
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Leschke, Julia C.; Schwemmer, Carsten
African-Americans are still experiencing racial discrimination rooted in structural bias in US American society. Research has shown that this behaviour can be reduced if individuals are made conscious of their bias, but little is known about these mechanisms on a societal level. Envisaging the white-supremacist Charlottesville rally in 2017 as an event that rendered American society conscious of its racism, we scrutinise whether racial bias in the digital media has changed, comparing levels of pre- and post-Charlottesville bias. We fit word embedding models to a broad sample of largely US media and quantify bias by calculating cosine similarities between terms for black or white actors and positive or negative character traits. We find no differences in positive character traits after Charlottesville. However, African-Americans are associated substantially less with negative character traits post-Charlottesville, while white actors are semantically closer to negative traits.
Platform Labour and the Mobile Underclass: Barriers to Participation in the United States and India
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Newlands, Gemma; Lutz, Christoph
Online crowdwork platforms have been praised as powerful vehicles for economic development, particularly for workers traditionally excluded from the labor market. However, there has been insufficient scrutiny as to the feasibility of crowdwork as an income-source among socio-economically deprived populations. This paper examines device requirements and differential access to digital infrastructure, both of which act as potential barriers to not only basic participation but also to economic success. Given the increasing prevalence of mobile-first and mobile-only populations, research on this topic aids in understanding the crowdwork ecosystem among differing socio-economic sectors. Based on a survey of 606 crowd workers in the United States and India, this paper uses both quantitative and qualitative data to explore whether reliance on mobile devices is detrimental for the economic outcomes of crowdwork. The results point to substantial inequalities in device use and received benefits from crowdwork, within each country and between the two contexts.
Proceedings of the Weizenbaum Conference 2019. Challenges of Digital Inequality - Digital Education, Digital Work, Digital Life
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society
With notion to radical changes in today’s labor markets and especially for lower income jobs with a less required proficiency; this paper has faced a to gig economy labor challenge to propose a solution which achieves to multi goals obsessively eyed on the future society which needs cleaner cities, crowd working synergy based on sharing economy trends and fairer incomes and motivations following sustainability goals. The proposed last mile delivery solution called “NaCL” will be implemented in the city of Bremerhaven as a sustainable crowd sourced last mile logistics solution to be evaluated as sustainable business model in the field.
Professionals as Online Students: Non-academic Satisfaction Drivers
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Bagher, Mammed; Jeske, Debora
As student populations become more heterogeneous, it is becoming apparent that the traditional and learner-specific predictors of student satisfaction are not the only important variables that predict students’ experience. Using a two-stage data collection process, we examined predictors in a sample of online MBA students over the course of a two-part survey. Regression analysis suggested that perceived control over one’s schedule at work was a significant predictor of distance learning satisfaction and program satisfaction. This suggested that the MBA students’ ability to maintain a work-life balance (which allows for both work and studies) plays a significant role in shaping student satisfaction. Correlations further suggested the higher the expectations of the students about program provisions and feedback, the lower their subsequent distance learning satisfaction scores. The results bring the importance of pre-enrolment program communication (rather than program efforts) as well as inclusion into focus.
Signaling Stigma: How Support Technology Induces Bodily Inequalities in Interaction
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Karafillidis, Athanasios
This paper contends that support technologies and their relevant artifacts recast bodily relations and thereby produce differing bodies in situations. In this vein, it sketches three main forms of physical human-machine relations (substitution, augmentation, support) and then introduces the concept of signaling stigma that allows to observe the situated management of new technological markers of difference. It concludes with suggestions for further research building on this approach to uncover the interactional foundations for what might grow into manifest inequalities - beyond the still important issues of personal data rights and access to technology.
Skill Development on the Shop Floor - Heading to a Digital Divide?
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Warnhoff, Kathleen; De Paiva Lareiro, Patricia
In recent years, there has been a huge debate on how modern sensor technology and the increasing connectivity of production systems have changed industrial production processes and working conditions. This article contributes to the discussion on the effects of digitalization on skill development under different working conditions with the following question: How has learning in the work-process changed with the introduction of data-based technologies? To examine the interaction between digital assistance systems and organizational parameters on informal learning, we analyzed the implementation of digital assistant systems in two different groups: low-skilled assembly workers and high-skilled shop floor managers. Our findings suggest that a lack of autonomy in workplaces has negative impacts on informal learning and thus skill development. When the design of assistance systems perpetuates preexisting inequalities in the working conditions, their use can contribute to a polarization of qualifications and a digital divide of the workforce.

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