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Digitalisierung und die Pandemie – aus der Krise lernen
Full text linkDie vorliegende Studie skizziert, welche Technologien und Anwendungen im Zuge der Pandemie in Unternehmen an Bedeutung gewonnen haben und welche Ressourcen ihnen bei der Digitalisierung zugutekamen. Die Befunde basieren auf 34 qualitativen Fallstudien in sechs Sektoren (Maschinenbau, Logistik, Automobil, Chemie, Finanzen, Gesundheit) sowie einer quantitativen Befragung von 540 Betrieben. Die Pandemie hat v.a. die Virtualisierung von Kommunikation und Interaktion in Betrieben vorangetrieben. Auf Automatisierungsprozesse hatte die Pandemie wenig unmittelbaren Einfluss. Zugleich zeigen die Befunde, dass Digitalisierungsprozesse in komplexen und sozialen Kontexten verortet sind und vielfältige Ressourcen (technisch, organisatorisch, finanziell) und Bedingungen (Unternehmenskultur, regulatorische Rahmenbedingungen) benötigen. Vielmehr als einen allgemeinen Digitalisierungsschub verstärkte sich die Kluft zwischen Digitalisierungsvorreiter\*innen und -nachzügler\*innen. Abschließend formuliert die Studie Handlungsempfehlungen an Politik und Sozialpartner\*innen.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII131, 16DII132, 16DII133 – “Deutsches Internet-Institut”)
Purple Code – With Martina Di Tullio
No full textMartina researches the use of digital technologies in rural indigenous communities in the Puna of Jujuy, Northwest Argentina. The Jujuy Puna is part of the so-called Lithium Triangle, a high-altitude desert area where lithium – one of the most important minerals for the production of digital technologies – is mined and processed, leading to the pollution of scarce water resources. In addition, the rural and indigenous population, who have always lived in this region, are excluded from the products of this exploitation. In this episode, Martina talks to us about the political meanings and consequences of these processes for everyday life in the Puna villages, about issues of digital sovereignty and the struggles of the communities. She argues that the spread of algorithmic digital media represents a new dimension of a centuries-old structure of coloniality for indigenous peoples in Latin America
Augmenting Data Download Packages – Integrating Data Donations, Video Metadata, and the Multimodal Nature of Audio-visual Content
Full text linkThis research explores the potential of augmented Data Download Packages (aDDPs) as a novel approach to analyze digital trace data, using TikTok as a use case to demonstrate the broader applicability of the method. The study demonstrates how these data packages can be used in social science research to understand better user behavior, content consumption patterns, and the relationship between self-reported preferences and actual digital behavior.We introduce the concept of aDDPs, which extend the conventional Data Download Packages (DDPs) by augmenting the collected data with survey data, metadata, content data, and multimodal content embeddings, among other possibilities - rendering aDDPs an unprecedentedly rich data source for social science research. This work provides an overview and guidance on collecting, augmenting DDPs, and analyzing the resulting aDDPs.In a pilot study on 18 aDDPs, we use the combination of data components in aDDPs to facilitate research on user engagement behavior and content classification. We showcase the potential of the information breadth and depth that aDDPs depict by exploiting the combination of multimodal content embeddings, the users’ watch history, and survey data. To do so, we train and compare uni- and multimodal classifiers, classify the 18 aDDPs’ videos, and investigate the extent to which user engagement behavior impacts future content suggestions. Furthermore, we compare the users retrieved content with the users’ self-reported content consumption
Weizenbaum Panel’s Literature Digest: June 2024
Full text linkDer Literatur Digest ist eine monatlich erscheinende Zusammenstellung des aktuellen Forschungsstandes zu Themen an der Schnittstelle zwischen Digitalisierung und Politik. Er präsentiert die neuesten Erkenntnisse zu Fragen der politischen Partizipation und guter Bürgerschaft in Zeiten der Digitalisierung.The Literature Digest is a monthly compilation of the current state of research on topics at the nexus of digitalization and politics. It presents the latest findings on issues of political participation and good citizenship in times of digitalization
TechDo Digest 3x1: February 2025
Full text linkThe TechDo Digest is the literature overview of the research group "Technology, Power and Domination" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Every two to three months, the group curates a list of relevant new publications within their field, focussing on analyses of structures of power and domination in digitalized societies, changes to democratic processes, regulation of and through technology, and the contestation of digital technologies. This newsletter issue covers articles that were published between October 2024 and February 2025.The Weizenbaum Institute is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF
Ausbalancierte Rechtsdurchsetzung mittels Verfahrensgrundsätzen
Full text linkDas Werk widmet sich nicht den Begründungen und Voraussetzungen der Verantwortung von Plattformen für die Inhalte ihrer Nutzer. Es geht den nächsten Schritt und stellt die rechtliche Gestaltung der Content Moderation in den Mittelpunkt: Plattformverfahren statt Plattformhaftung. Dafür wird Moderation als Verfahren im rechtlichen Sinn verstanden und systematisiert. Dazu gehört ihr Verfahrensrecht u.a. aus DSA, UrhDaG, P2B-VO, TCO-VO und den Verträgen der Plattformbetreiber. Die Plattformen müssen nicht nur Recht durchsetzen, sondern einem komplexen Zusammenspiel aus Kommunikations- und Schutzinteressen gerecht werden. Dabei helfen die im Buch vorgeschlagenen optimierenden Verfahrensgrundsätze u.a. zur Anhörung oder Beschleunigung
“Guilds” as Worker Empowerment and Control in a Chinese Data Work Platform
Full text linkData 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
Smartphone Use in Germany in 2023: A Mixed-Method Investigation
Full text linkOur understanding of typical smartphone behavior has only recently begun to advance due to the accessibility of increasingly valid data sources. Beyond analysing the frequency, duration, and content of smartphone activities, there is substantial value in understanding when people engage in particular forms of mobile media use, and data collection methods that go beyond simple retrospective self-reports provide the means to do so. This paper contributes to our understanding of contemporary smartphone usage patterns and their temporal dynamics by employing a mixed-method dataset obtained through Android logging, iOS data donation, and mobile experience sampling methods. This dataset captures both the quantity and quality of smartphone use among a large, quota-targeted sample of German adults (n = 2032). The findings provide a comprehensive view of smartphone use, examining both overall trends and daily rhythms. They reveal that smartphone usage is typified by frequent, short interactions, with younger users displaying more fragmented patterns compared to older counterparts, alongside variations in the gratifications derived across age groups. These findings lay the groundwork for further theorization about the causes, nature, and consequences of the observed usage patterns, while also offering essential contextual and methodological insights for researchers employing intensive longitudinal approaches to evaluate smartphone usage
ChatGPT and Its Text Genre Competence: An Exploratory Study
Full text linkBeing able to reciprocate and produce different kinds of texts is a key quality and a core professional competence. Therefore, genre competence is fundamental in not only educational and academic contexts but also professional environments. This paper addresses the extent to which text-generating AI tools could support the development of genre competence and how suitable they are as a tool for genre-based writing didactics. To answer this, it is necessary to examine whether AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are competent in terms of text genres. To do this, the research explores whether ChatGPT is capable of producing and revising genre-specific texts or identifying and analyzing genre-specific patterns and whether it produces different outputs in terms of genre. To examine these questions, we have conducted a pilot study that includes several different text types and several areas of application (generating, revising, summarizing, classifying, and analyzing). The paper’s results relate to three aspects of “Education in the Digital World”: a) competencies, b) possible changes to educational and learning processes using AI tools, and c) appropriate tools for education in general.The Weizenbaum Institute is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF
Gender-specific homophily on Instagram and implications on information spread
Full text linkMore and more social interactions happen online. On online social networks such as Instagram, millions of users share, like, and comment on photos and videos every day, interacting with other users world wide, at large scale and at a high rate. These networks do not only introduce new user experiences, but they also enable new insights into human behavior. Here, we use these new possibilities to study homophilic behavior—the tendency of individuals to bond with people similar to themselves. While homophilic behavior has been observed in many contexts, little is known about gender-specific differences and the extent of homophilic behavior of female and male users in online social networks. Based on a unique and extensive data set, covering over 800,000 (directed) Instagram interactions and a time span of three years, we shed light on differences between genders and uncover an intriguing asymmetry of homophily. In particular, we show that female users exhibit homophily to a larger extent than male users. The magnitude of this asymmetry depends on the type of interaction, as differences are more pronounced for ‘comment’-interactions than for ‘like’-interactions. Given these empirical observations, we further study the implications of such gender differences on the spread of information in social networks in a basic model. We find that on average, a piece of information that originates from a female group reaches significantly more female users than male users