Auflistung nach Forschungsbereichen "Digitale Technologien in der Gesellschaft"

Gerade angezeigt 1 - 20 von 46
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    Active Social Media Use and Its Impact on Well-being: An Experimental Study on the Effects of Posting Pictures on Instagram
    (2023) Krause, Hannes-Vincent; große Deters, Fenne; Baumann, Annika; Krasnova, Hanna
    Active use of social networking sites (SNSs) has long been assumed to benefit users’ well-being. However, this established hypothesis is increasingly being challenged, with scholars criticizing its lack of empirical support and the imprecise conceptualization of active use. Nevertheless, with considerable heterogeneity among existing studies on the hypothesis and causal evidence still limited, a final verdict on its robustness is still pending. To contribute to this ongoing debate, we conducted a week-long randomized control trial with N = 381 adult Instagram users recruited via Prolific. Specifically, we tested how active SNS use, operationalized as picture postings on Instagram, affects different dimensions of well-being. The results depicted a positive effect on users’ positive affect but null findings for other well-being outcomes. The findings broadly align with the recent criticism against the active use hypothesis and support the call for a more nuanced view on the impact of SNSs.
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    Articulation Work and Tinkering for Fairness in Machine Learning
    (2024) Fahimi, Miriam; Russo, Mayra; Scott, Kristen M.; Vidal, Maria-Esther; Berendt, Bettina; Kinder-Kurlanda, Katharina
    The field of fair AI aims to counter biased algorithms through computational modelling. However, it faces increasing criticism for perpetuating the use of overly technical and reductionist methods. As a result, novel approaches appear in the field to address more socially-oriented and interdisciplinary (SOI) perspectives on fair AI. In this paper, we take this dynamic as the starting point to study the tension between computer science (CS) and SOI research. By drawing on STS and CSCW theory, we position fair AI research as a matter of 'organizational alignment': what makes research 'doable' is the successful alignment of three levels of work organization (the social world, the laboratory, and the experiment). Based on qualitative interviews with CS researchers, we analyze the tasks, resources, and actors required for doable research in the case of fair AI. We find that CS researchers engage with SOI research to some extent, but organizational conditions, articulation work, and ambiguities of the social world constrain the doability of SOI research for them. Based on our findings, we identify and discuss problems for aligning CS and SOI as fair AI continues to evolve.
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    Away from Keyboard. Design research in the context of social and political participation
    (transcript, 2022) Herlo, Bianca; Schütze, Konstanze; Hofhues, Sandra
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    Can civic data be counterdata and open data? Exploring the limits of data, contestation and governance
    (Nomos, 2025) Shibuya, Yuya; Olojo, Seyi; Hamm, Andrea; Krishnan, Radhika; Pargman, Teresa Cerratto; Kox, Thomas; Ullrich, André; Zech, Herbert
    The increasing surveillance by big tech companies or/and governments has raised concerns about the democratic and participatory structure of the datafied society. Meanwhile, over the course of the past decade, various bottom-up civic tech and digital civic initiatives have emerged to tackle pressing local issues, such as air pollution and disaster response, often via technology-mediated data collection, curation, analysis, design and visualisations, thus promoting democratic participation. In this article, we discuss how these data are understood in diverse contexts beyond the realm of civic tech and digital civics. In doing so, we explore the potential and limits of civic data by exploring the intersections of and differences between civic data and adjacent data-related concepts often used by civic tech communities themselves: counterdata and open data. Through our discursive exploration of these three data concepts, we conclude that understanding is limited when it comes to determining which data are ‘civic’, and that discussion of questions related to power structures, diversity and inclusion and infrastructuring of civic data has been minimal.
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    Design thinking capabilities in the digital world: A bibliometric analysis of emerging trends
    (2023) Dragičević, Nikolina; Vladova, Gergana; Ullrich, André
    Recent research suggests that design thinking practices may foster the development of needed capabilities in new digitalised landscapes. However, existing publications represent individual contributions, and we lack a holistic understanding of the value of design thinking in a digital world. No review, to date, has offered a holistic retrospection of this research. In response, in this bibliometric review, we aim to shed light on the intellectual structure of multidisciplinary design thinking literature related to capabilities relevant to the digital world in higher education and business settings, highlight current trends and suggest further studies to advance theoretical and empirical underpinnings. Our study addresses this aim using bibliometric methods—bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis as they are particularly suitable for identifying current trends and future research priorities at the forefront of the research. Overall, bibliometric analyses of the publications dealing with the related topics published in the last 10 years (extracted from the Web of Science database) expose six trends and two possible future research developments highlighting the expanding scope of the design thinking scientific field related to capabilities required for the (more sustainable and human-centric) digital world. Relatedly, design thinking becomes a relevant approach to be included in higher education curricula and human resources training to prepare students and workers for the changing work demands. This paper is well-suited for education and business practitioners seeking to embed design thinking capabilities in their curricula and for design thinking and other scholars wanting to understand the field and possible directions for future research.
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    Designforschung im Kontext sozialer und politischer Partizipation
    (transcript Verlag, 2022) Herlo, Bianca; Hofhues, Sandra; Schütze, Konstanze
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    Digital Sovereignty in times of AI: between perils of hegemonic agendas and possibilities of alternative approaches
    (2024) Costa Barbosa, Alexandre; Herlo, Bianca; Joost, Gesche
    Although it has been on the agenda for over a decade, the importance of digital sovereignty has recently increased. Nations-states worldwide have developed policies or expressed through speeches the need to safeguard their interests in the digital realm. The current technological frontier is artificial intelligence (AI). Hence, digital sovereignty agendas now encompass the complexities introduced by AI. This article explores contemporary discourses on digital sovereignty, highlighting how different ideological positions shape these conversations. Current discussions reveal a multifaceted field where sovereignty is interpreted through varied lenses, directly influencing the governance of technologies such as AI. Predominant perspectives often focus on state, market, or individual sovereignty over data, algorithms, and AI models. However, through document and discourse analysis, the article examines alternative approaches such as sustainable, grassroots, and feminist digital sovereignties and those led by communities or indigenous peoples. These visions challenge the mainstream by emphasizing autonomy, inclusion, and sustainability in managing critical AI resources, including computing, databases, data, and algorithm governance. By analyzing these approaches, the article identifies principles that can foster more diverse, democratic, and virtuous AI development. Finds points out that participatory governance and the development of emancipatory technologies are essential to navigating the ethical and practical issues that emerge at the intersection of digital sovereignty and AI. In a normative way, the article concludes by reflecting on how these alternative discourses can influence the future of AI, pointing to paths that could lead to a more inclusive and sovereign AI development aligned with collective and environmental values. Future research could explore how these sovereignty conceptions catalyze an AI's evolution to align with collective digital self-determination and more conscious and equitable resource management practices.
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    Diversity and bias in DBpedia and Wikidata as a challenge for text-analysis tools
    (2023) Berendt, Bettina; Karadeniz, Oğuz Özgür; Kıyak, Sercan; Mertens, Stefan; d’Haenens, Leen
    Diversity Searcher is a tool originally developed to help analyse diversity in news media texts. It relies on automated content analysis and thus rests on prior assumptions and depends on certain design choices related to diversity. One such design choice is the external knowledge source(s) used. In this article, we discuss implications that these sources can have on the results of content analysis. We compare two data sources that Diversity Searcher has worked with – DBpedia and Wikidata – with respect to their ontological coverage and diversity, and describe implications for the resulting analyses of text corpora. We describe a case study of the relative over- or underrepresentation of Belgian political parties between 1990 and 2020. In particular, we found a staggering overrepresentation of the political right in the English-language DBpedia.
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    Do All Roads Lead to Rome? Exploring the Relationship Between Social Referrals, Referral Propensity and Stickiness to Video-on-Demand Websites
    (2020) Köster, Antonia; Matt, Christian; Hess, Thomas
    Content website providers have two main goals: They seek to attract consumers and to keep them on their websites as long as possible. To reach potential consumers, they can utilize several online channels, such as paid search results or advertisements on social media, all of which usually require a substantial marketing budget. However, with rising user numbers of online communication tools, website providers increasingly integrate social sharing buttons on their websites to encourage existing consumers to facilitate referrals to their social networks. While little is known about this social form of guiding consumers to a content website, the study proposes that the way in which consumers reach a website is related to their stickiness to the website and their propensity to refer content to others. By using a unique clickstream data set of a video-on-demand website, the study compares consumers referred by their social network to those consumers arriving at the website via organic search or social media advertisements in terms of stickiness to the website (e.g., visit length, number of page views, video starts) and referral likelihood. The results show that consumers referred through social referrals spend more time on the website, view more pages, and start more videos than consumers who respond to social media advertisements, but less than those coming through organic search. Concerning referral propensity, the results indicate that consumers attracted to a website through social referrals are more likely to refer content to others than those who came through organic search or social media advertisements. The study offers direct insights to managers and recommends an increase in their efforts to promote social referrals on their websites.
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    Documenting Data Production Processes: A Participatory Approach for Data Work
    (2022) Miceli, Milagros; Yang, Tianling; Alvarado Garcia, Adriana; Posada, Julian; Wang, Sonja Mei; Pohl,Marc; Hanna, Alex
    The opacity of machine learning data is a significant threat to ethical data work and intelligible systems. Previous research has addressed this issue by proposing standardized checklists to document datasets. This paper expands that field of inquiry by proposing a shift of perspective: from documenting datasets towards documenting data production. We draw on participatory design and collaborate with data workers at two companies located in Bulgaria and Argentina, where the collection and annotation of data for machine learning are outsourced. Our investigation comprises 2.5 years of research, including 33 semi-structured interviews, five co-design workshops, the development of prototypes, and several feedback instances with participants. We identify key challenges and requirements related to the integration of documentation practices in real-world data production scenarios. Our findings comprise important design considerations and highlight the value of designing data documentation based on the needs of data workers. We argue that a view of documentation as a boundary object, i.e., an object that can be used differently across organizations and teams but holds enough immutable content to maintain integrity, can be useful when designing documentation to retrieve heterogeneous, often distributed, contexts of data production.
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    Dreaming of AI: environmental sustainability and the promise of participation
    (2024) Zehner, Nicolas; Ullrich, André
    There is widespread consensus among policymakers that climate change and digitalisation constitute the most pressing global transformations shaping human life in the 21st century. Seeking to address the challenges arising at this juncture, governments, technologists and scientists alike increasingly herald artificial intelligence (AI) as a vehicle to propel climate change mitigation and adaptation. In this paper, we explore the intersection of digitalisation and climate change by examining the deployment of AI in government-led climate action. Building on participant observations conducted in the context of the “Civic Tech Lab for Green”—a government-funded public interest AI initiative—and eight expert interviews, we investigate how AI shapes the negotiation of environmental sustainability as an issue of public interest. Challenging the prescribed means–end relationship between AI and environmental protection, we argue that the unquestioned investment in AI curtails political imagination and displaces discussion of climate “problems” and possible “solutions” with “technology education”. This line of argumentation is rooted in empirical findings that illuminate three key tensions in current coproduction efforts: “AI talk vs. AI walk”, “civics washing vs. civics involvement” and “public invitation vs. public participation”. Emphasising the importance of re-exploring the innovative state in climate governance, this paper extends academic literature in science and technology studies that examines
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    E-participation in municipalities services: A systematic literature review of evaluation approaches
    (2025) Ietto, Beatrice; Ullrich, André
    Evaluating e-participation initiatives is critical to understanding their impact on democratic processes, public policy, and societal welfare. However, existing evaluation frameworks often neglect the complexities of multi-stakeholder environments. Through a systematic literature review of 47 empirical cases, this gap is addressed by developing a typology of evaluation categories (supply-side, user activity, public value, political, and societal impact) and a comprehensive evaluation framework that accounts for the diverse objectives of all the involved stakeholders — technology providers, local governments, and citizens. By integrating short-term engagement metrics and long-term societal outcomes, the framework ensures more accurate assessments of e-participation success. We argue that adopting a multi- stakeholder approach in evaluation can significantly enhance the effectiveness, inclusivity, and sustainability of e-participation initiatives. Our findings challenge current evaluation practices and provide guidance for practitioners aiming to optimize governance, improve public services, and empower citizens through more robust evaluation methods. This study lays the foundation for systematic evaluation methods that consider stakeholder objectives, crucial for advancing e- participation research, and policy.
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    Editorial: Practicing Sovereignty – Interventions for Open Digital Futures
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2023) Irrgang, Daniel; Herlo, Bianca
    This issue is dedicated to the Weizenbaum Conference 2022, titled ‘Practicing Sovereignty: Interventions for Open Digital Futures.’ The Weizenbaum Institute’s annual gathering brought together researchers, networks, and collaborators to focus on the theme of ‘digital sovereignty.’ This term, hotly debated and used with varying connotations in fields such as research, activism, law, and policy-making, refers to competencies, duties, and rights in digital societies. The contributions compiled in this issue are based on papers presented at the 2022 conference. They explore notions of digital sovereignty in tension with topics such as AI deepfakes, algorithmic governmentality, ethics and datafication in the context of machine learning, and community-driven open-access publishing in academia.
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    Editorial: Sustainable Artificial Intelligence – Critical and Constructive Reflections on Promises and Solutions, Amplifications and Contradictions
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2024-07-16) Ullrich, André; Rehak, Rainer; Hamm, Andrea; Mühlhoff, Rainer
    The developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have seen many ups and downs since AI’s infancy. Recently, however, surprisingly powerful AI systems have been developed and are widely considered as silver bullets for any kind of social, ecological, political, scientific, or economic problem. However, the critical consideration of AI developments – especially their implications for society and the environment – has not been cultivated to the same extent. This imbalance leaves plenty of room for unreflective belief in technological progress and accompanying “techno-solutionism.” In order to inform and advance the debate regarding sustainability-oriented AI and the sustainability of AI itself, we compiled this thematic issue with reflections on the promises and solutions, amplifications and contradictions created by introducing AI into the sustainability endeavor and introducing sustainability-related application cases into AI development.
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    Employee involvement and participation in digital transformation: a combined analysis of literature and practitioners' expertise
    (2023) Ullrich, André; Reißig, Malte; Niehoff, Silke; Beier, Grischa
    This paper provides a systematization of the existing body of literature on both employee participation goals and the intervention formats in the context of organizational change. Furthermore, degrees of employee involvement that the intervention formats address are identified and related to the goals of employee participation. On this basis, determinants of employee involvement and participation in the context of digital transformation are unveiled.
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    Empowering smart regions: addressing challenges and leveraging enabling factors in municipal digital transformation
    (Nomos, 2025) Brandenburger, Bonny; Hamm, Andrea; Krohn, Caroline; Sühlmann-Faul, Felix; Atug, Manuel; Döpp, Nicole; Ullrich, André; Kox, Thomas; Ullrich, André; Zech, Herbert
    The advancing digital transformation of society creates a wide range of opportunities for improved access to information and resources that contribute to ensuring the availability of public services and the development of sustainable living spaces. This underlying potential does not only apply to urban areas; digitalisation projects are also being implemented in rural municipalities in order to exploit the potential of digital transformation. Nevertheless, the field of so-called smart regions has yet to receive substantial focus in research. To understand the specific challenges and enabling factors of digital transformation activities in urban-rural areas, a workshop was organised with the cooperation of municipal representatives of a model region in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Therein, specific technical, economic and social challenges as well as enabling factors of municipal digitalisation projects aimed at developing smart regions were identified. The results show that the success of digital transformation meas‐ ures in urban-rural areas is not only determined by the expansion of a corresponding technical infrastructure but in particular by the acceptance of citizens and municipality employees, as well as economic viability. This research further informs municipalities and future researchers on the critical factors required to effectively conduct digitalisation projects in the smart region context.
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    Gestaltungspraktiken in transdisziplinärer Forschung
    (transcript, 2024) Herlo, Bianca; Ebert, Iris; Rahn, Sebastian; Rodatz, Christoph
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    Gewissensbisse - Fallbeispiele zu ethischen Problemen der Informatik
    (transcript Verlag, 2023) Class, Christina B.; Coy, Wolfgang; Kurz, Constanze; Obert, Otto; Rehak, Rainer; Trinitis, Carsten; Ullrich, Stefan; Weber-Wulff, Debora
    Die vielfältigen Möglichkeiten moderner IT-Systeme bringen drängende ethische Probleme mit sich. Neben der offensichtlichen Frage nach einer moralisch tragbaren Verwendung von Informationstechnologien sind ebenso die Aspekte des Entwerfens, Herstellens und Betreibens derselben entscheidend. Die Beiträge setzen sich mit dem Konfliktpotenzial zwischen Technik und Ethik auseinander, indem sie lebensnahe Fallbeispiele vorstellen und fragenbasiert zur Diskussion einladen. Damit liefern sie eine praktische Herangehensweise zum gemeinsamen Nachdenken über moralische Gebote und ethischen Umgang mit IT-Systemen und ihren Möglichkeiten. Der Band eignet sich damit in hervorragender Weise zum Vermitteln und Erlernen von ethischer Reflexions- und Handlungskompetenz in der Informatik sowie im Umgang mit IT-Technologien überhaupt.
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    “Guilds” as Worker Empowerment and Control in a Chinese Data Work Platform
    (Association for Computing Machinery, 2024) Yang, Tianling; Miceli, Milagros
    Data work plays a fundamental role in the development of algorithmic systems and the AI industry. It is often performed in business process outsourcing (BPO) companies and crowdsourcing platforms, involving a global and distributed workforce as well as networks of collaborative actors. Previous work on community building among data workers centers organization and mutual support or focuses on the structuring and instrumentalization of crowdworker groups for complicated projects. We add to these lines of research by focusing on a specific form of community building encouraged and facilitated by platforms in China: guilds. Based on ethnographic work on a Chinese crowdsourcing platform and 14 semi-structured interviews with data workers, our findings show that guilds are a form of both worker empowerment and control. With this work, we add a nuanced empirical case to the interconnection of BPOs, online communities and crowdsourcing platforms in the current data production sector in China, thus expanding previous investigations on global perspectives of data production. We discuss guilds in relation to individual workers and highlight their effects on data work, including efficient coordination, enhanced standardization, and flattened power structure.
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    “Guilds” as Worker Empowerment and Control in a Chinese Data Work Platform
    (Association for Computing Machinery, 2024) Yang, Tianling; Miceli, Milagros
    Data work plays a fundamental role in the development of algorithmic systems and the AI industry. It is often performed in business process outsourcing (BPO) companies and crowdsourcing platforms, involving a global and distributed workforce as well as networks of collaborative actors. Previous work on community building among data workers centers organization and mutual support or focuses on the structuring and instrumentalization of crowdworker groups for complicated projects. We add to these lines of research by focusing on a specific form of community building encouraged and facilitated by platforms in China: guilds. Based on ethnographic work on a Chinese crowdsourcing platform and 14 semi-structured interviews with data workers, our findings show that guilds are a form of both worker empowerment and control. With this work, we add a nuanced empirical case to the interconnection of BPOs, online communities and crowdsourcing platforms in the current data production sector in China, thus expanding previous investigations on global perspectives of data production. We discuss guilds in relation to individual workers and highlight their effects on data work, including efficient coordination, enhanced standardization, and flattened power structure.