Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/956
The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society is an interdisciplinary, diamond open access journal that investigates processes of digitalization in society from the perspectives of different research areas.
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Item Editorial: Special Issue: Well-Being in the Digital World(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025-12-18) Baumann, Annika; Gladkaya, Margarita; Krasnova, Hanna; Krause, Hannes-Vincent; Meythaler, AntoniaSecuring individual well-being represents an important societal goal. While governments across the world have introduced multiple initiatives to ensure and promote mental health, support for vulnerable population groups remains insufficient, highlighting the need for innovative approaches. Digital technologies offer the potential to enhance well-being. At the same time, their use can also result in numerous (unintended) risks. To enrich and stimulate scientific discourse in this area, this special issue presents five interdisciplinary contributions positioned at the intersection of digital technology use and users’ well-being. Topics include the effects of addictive design and dark patterns, the supportive role of online mental health communities, measuring eudaimonic virtues in technology interaction, gendered experiences and strategies for managing technostress at work, and dynamic practices of digital disconnection. Together, these papers contribute to a better understanding of the complexities behind technology use, provide a foundation for policy development, and aim to enhance societal awareness of how digital tools can shape users’ mental health and overall well-being.Item Pay Cashless and Be Clueless About Your Data?(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025) Jessen, MarekThis article analyzes the use practices of payment data along the payment processing chain in Europe. By first mapping the key actors involved in digital payments and their data use practices, this research offers novel insights into the multiplicity of actors that intermingle when a digital payment is made. The findings are interpreted through an adaptation of Zygmuntowski’s data governance trilemma, which seeks to balance three objectives in the context of payment data: preserving privacy, monetizing data, and enabling law enforcement. The article shows that the widespread interest in data does not stop at payment data. Preserving privacy is difficult to pinpoint due to the opacity, lack of transparency, and complexity of the data processing behind a digital payment. Meanwhile, monetizing data is a core practice for many actors, although it is pursued with varying levels of vigor. The growing availability of data poses significant risks, as information initially collected for payment processing may be used to enable law enforcement. Promising alternatives such as Wero and the digital euro could help curb the dominance of non-European players, increase transparency, and offer data-minimizing payment options.Item The Ideal Worker Revisited(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025) Gaitsch, Myriam; Schörpf, PhilipThis paper explores technostress in office work with a focus on gender dynamics. Employing an exploratory study design and focus group discussions, the research reveals that digitalization within organizations can lead to technostress through the emergence of techno-overload, techno-invasion, and techno-uncertainty. This paper highlights how employees, rather than organizations, develop individual strategies for coping with technostress, meaning that it is the former who are often burdened with managing technostress. Women, particularly mothers with dependent children, are disproportionately affected, juggling work and childcare through flexible schedules but facing invisible workloads and continuous connectivity. These challenges underscore a persistent gendered division of labor. We conclude that while digital technologies offer opportunities, an absence of consciously shaped strategies can heighten employee risks, particularly those related to gender disparities.Item Generative AI and Changes to Knowledge Work(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025) Butollo, Florian; Haase, Jennifer; Katzinski, Ann; Krüger, Anne K.The application of generative AI (GenAI) tools has led to widespread speculation about the implications of technological change for the future of knowledge work. This article provides insights on how the use of GenAI affects work practices in the fields of IT programming, science and coaching based on expert interviews and a quantitative survey among users of GenAI. Specifically, we ask about perceptions on skills, creativity, and authenticity, which we regard as key qualities of knowledge work. Our results belie the expectation that human expertise and skills lose importance. Our study rather shows the contrary: debates and experiences with genAI help to sharpen and value the core of the professional identity. Our study thus also highlights that professions consist of more than the sum of single work tasks. They contain experiential and tacit knowledge about how to frame, prepare, and interpret work steps that are difficult to replicate by machines. However, there are also concerns that professions could be hollowed out and especially that the quality of products and services could deteriorate as automated ‘good-enough-versions’ of the former offers become commonplace.Item Disconnecting in a Digital World(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025) Pohl, Merle; Wessel, Lauri; vom Brocke, JanHow individuals use or refrain from using mobile digital technology in their habitual daily practices has significant implications for their well-being. Closely related to digital well-being is the sociotechnical phenomenon of voluntary digital disconnection; a deliberate form of non-use that varies in frequency and duration. While this concept foregrounds intention, disconnection may also arise incidentally in everyday life. This study explores the phenomenon through an information systems lens and draws on sociological practice theory to examine how digital disconnection is enacted in practice, based on qualitative data from 12 interviews and 5 observations. The findings suggest that digital disconnection unfolds continuously over time, both with and without deliberate intention. Therefore, we propose digital disconnecting as a broader term that encompasses not only deliberate non-use, but also emergent, unintended forms of disconnecting. Our analysis further demonstrates that digital disconnecting unfolds along a continuum of dynamic and interrelated dimensions: temporal, mental-emotional, technical, and spatial. Importantly, regarding the spatial context, we found that places – and the placing of a digital device within them – matter for enacting digital disconnecting. Our findings further the existing understanding of disconnection strategies by highlighting that individuals may strategically use places and device placement to enact disconnecting.Item Disinformation Resilience in Backsliding Democracies(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025) Peißker, Antonia; Cowburn, Mike; Klinger, UlrikeSocieties’ resilience to disinformation is often linked to democratic backsliding, but the relationships between these concepts remain poorly understood. To measure structural resilience to disinformation, we expand the framework developed for consolidated Western democracies by Humprecht et al. (2020) to democracies that are experiencing varying degrees of democratic backsliding; the Visegrád Group of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Our application leads us to generate additional macro-level features that should be incorporated when thinking about disinformation resilience in states experiencing democratic backsliding. Specifically, we identify how the role of civil society operates differently depending on the level of democracy and that the value of media trust is conditioned by the degree of institutional capture, adding these complementary measures to the original framework. Our updated empirical analyses suggest that, of our cases, Slovakia had the greatest and Hungary had the least resilience to disinformation. The advancement of the framework enables its application beyond consolidated democracies by identifying additional aspects that help build structural resilience to disinformation elsewhere.Item Is Authenticity an Effective Antidote to Misinformation?(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025) Hoepman, Jaap-HenkThe growing impact of false and misleading information is a cause for concern. Some have suggested an authenticity crisis as the cause, namely, the fact that we can no longer be certain of the source and integrity of a particular piece of information. To fix this, the ubiquitous use of digital signatures has been proposed to (re)establish the authenticity of information. We argue that this is unlikely to curb the impact of misinformation for several reasons. First, little evidence suggests that more authenticity could theoretically solve part of the misinformation problem. In fact, the implied use of signatures as a proxy for veracity is fundamentally problematic. Second, there are significant barriers to the practical implementation of ubiquitous signing. Lastly, we point out potential negative side effects. We conclude that authenticity is not effective in countering misinformation.Item Beyond Open Access. Open Educational Resources for Legal Clarity, Sustainability, and Digital Sovereignty in European University Alliances(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025) Schön, Sandra; Ebner, MartinOpen educational resources (OER) are widely recognized for improving access to education and enabling the sharing of knowledge. However, in the context of European university alliances such as Unite!, OER offer additional, often underappreciated benefits that are crucial for cross-border collaboration and sustainable development in higher education. This paper explores three key aspects of OER that are particularly relevant to European alliances. First, OER enable the legally secure use of educational resources across national borders, addressing uncertainties about copyright laws, particularly for translations and adaptations. This ensures compliance with different legal frameworks while fostering collaboration. Second, OER support sustainability by ensuring that investments in educational materials are not limited by restrictive usage rights. This is especially critical in alliances where shared resources are central to fostering long-term cooperation and aligning with sustainability goals, a priority for Unite!. Finally, OER contribute to digital sovereignty by empowering institutions and educators to create, adapt, and share resources without relying on proprietary platforms or licenses. This coincides with European alliances’ broader strategic objective of promoting autonomy and resilience in their digital ecosystems. By highlighting these often-overlooked benefits of OER, the present research aims to broaden the perspective on their strategic importance in fostering collaboration, sustainability, and sovereignty within European university alliances.Item Measuring the Experience of Eudaimonic Virtues in Technology Interaction: Development and Validation of the Eudaimonic Interaction Inventory (EII)(Weizenbaum Institute, 2025-05-12) Jörs, Julian Marvin; De Luca, Ernesto WilliamA growing emphasis on well-being in technology development raises the need for adequate measurement methods to quantify technology’s influence on individuals’ well-being. Psychological research has identified different well-being orientations, including hedonia (seeking comfort, relaxation, and pleasure) or eudaimonia, which emphasizes personal growth, excellence, meaningfulness, and authenticity. In particular, promoting eudaimonic well-being (EWB) continues to be a challenge in human-computer interaction as it manifests itself as a multidimensional construct. This paper presents the Eudaimonic Interaction Inventory, a scale for quantifying the experience of four core aspects of eudaimonic virtues (authenticity, meaning, excellence, growth) in interaction with technology. The inventory was validated through six steps across three distinct studies, resulting in twelve items categorized into four subscales. With this inventory, we hope to contribute to EWB research in technology by making future interactions with technology measurable in terms of EWB.Item China’s Deepening Infrastructural Capitalism: The Hard Landing of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Automated Technology(Weizenbaum Institute, 2024-12-05) Pun, NgaiThis paper explores the rise of China’s infrastructural capitalism, a stage of global capitalism marked by state-led infrastructure development and the advent of digital platforms. Drawing on political economy and cultural studies, the author frames the current artificial intelligence and big data race between China and the United States as a new Cold War driven not by ideology but by competing capitalist logics. China’s model is seen as a response rather than an alternative to the limits of neoliberal capitalism, merging extractive, industrial, and digital forms of capital. The paper emphasizes the contradictions inherent in this system, particularly the exploitation of labor and environmental degradation. At the center of the analysis lies the concept of the “infrastructural power of labor,” which highlights how various worker subjects (e.g., factory, logistics, platform, and data laborers) are both shaped by and shape infrastructural capitalism. The paper calls for renewed attention to labor struggles and solidarity in the face of growing precarity in the artificial intelligence and automation-driven economy.