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The 2021 German Federal Election on Social Media: Analysing Electoral Risks Created by Twitter and Facebook
Get PDFSafeguarding democratic elections is hard. Social media plays a vital role in the discourse around elections and during electoral campaigns. The following article provides an analysis of the ‘systemic electoral risks’ created by Twitter and Facebook and the mitigation strategies employed by the platforms. It is based on the 2020 proposal by the European Commission for the new Digital Services Act (DSA) in the context of the 2021 German federal elections. This article focuses on Twitter and Facebook and their roles during the German federal elections that took place on 26 September 2021. We analysed three systemic electoral risk categories: 1) the dissemination of illegal content, 2) negative effects on electoral rights, and 3) the influence of disinformation and developed systematic categories for this purpose. In conclusion, we discuss how to respond to these challenges as well as avenues for future research
Weizenbaum Panel’s Literature Digest: May 2023
No full textDer 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.
Zusätzlich zum PDF bieten wir den Digest im BibTeX-Austauschformat an.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.
In addition, we provide this Literature Digest as BibTeX file.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Proceedings of the Weizenbaum Conference 2022: Practicing Sovereignty - Interventions for Open Digital Futures
Get PDFWe advocate for the adoption of an integrated strategy aimed at achieving increased participation via effective digital public administration services. We argue that it is urgent to understand the integration of participatory approaches from the field of e-democracy in digitalized public administration, as trendsetting e-government implementations are already underway. We base our arguments on the observation that the approaches in e-democracy and e-government seem to be locked into extremes: In e-democracy, (experimental) platforms have failed to create a participative political culture. E- government, in turn, narrowly perceives citizens as customers. Additionally, efforts to increase digital sovereignty have mostly been educational ones that support citizens’ self-determined use of the digital but do not address sovereignty via the digital. As a result, digitalized public administration is not achieving its potential to create opportunities for participation during encounters with the administration. Hence, we argue for the adoption of a digitally aided sovereignty as a normative guide for an e-government transformation that strives to create opportunities for participation via the digital.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Veni vidi VC – the backend of the digital economy and its political making
Get PDFDebates on the digital economy neglect its political and financial underpinnings. This article develops the theoretical framework of governing along the investment chain to grasp the backend of the digital economy, that is venture capital and its political underpinnings. Concretely, I focus on the European Investment Fund and how the European Commission uses it to govern along the investment chain into the digital economy. Therefore I conceptualize venture capital from a political economy perspective, situate the European Investment Fund in the European polity, and analyze transformations in the shape of the investment chains, risk-return distribution, and infrastructural power in three distinct periods. I show how in acts of crisisled institutional innovation, the European Investment Fund has taken a central position in European venture capital investment chains, while skewing the risk-return relationship towards private markets and granting infrastructural power to venture capital funds. This dynamic inhibits the European Investment Fund from taking a progressive and proactive role in European venture capital markets
The Effects on Credibility and Trustworthiness of Targeting Disclosure Labels for Micro-Targeted Political Advertisements
Get PDFPolitical micro-targeting describes the use of data to identify members of a target audience and send messages designed to fit their views and resonate with them. The practice has received considerable attention of late, especially around questions of transparency. This study explores one potential solution to this quandary, namely, disclosure labels. Adopting a pre-registered online one-factorial three-group between-subjects experimental design, we have investigated how different types of disclosure labels for micro-targeted advertisements impact source and message credibility, as well as source trustworthiness. Furthermore, we have investigated the potential mediating effect of persuasion knowledge on these effects. We exposed 227 German Facebook users to either a Facebook advertisement without a disclosure label, a sponsored disclosure label, or a targeting disclosure label that stated they were targeted based on their online behavior. The results demonstrate small and non-significant differences between groups regarding source and message credibility and source trustworthiness, with no mediation by persuasion knowledge observed. Additionally, most participants did not recall the disclosure we exposed them to, potentially explaining these small effects within our sample. In conclusion, our targeting disclosure approaches were insufficiently informative. Hence, we argue that platforms should put more effort into improving transparency for their users than they currently do
REUSE Software: Making Copyright and Licensing Compliance Easier for Everyone
Get PDFBest practices for displaying data and metadata pertaining to software licensing and copyright are currently unharmonized. The multiple competing licensing requirements for communicating the chosen license of a software project and its copyright holders increase the compliance burden on project maintainers, especially for smaller free and open source (FOSS) ones. The "REUSE Software" initiative aims to remediate this situation by defining a set of easy-to-implement best practices for declaring copyright and licensing in an unambiguous, human- and machine-readable way, so that the information is preserved when the file is copied and reused by third parties. REUSE specifications facilitate management policies for digital commons, improving data and metadata communication for individuals, communities, governments, and businesses.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Defending Informational Sovereignty by Detecting Deepfakes: Risks and Opportunities of an AI-Based Detector for Deepfake-Based Disinformation and Illegal Activities
Get PDFThis paper will first investigate possible contributions that an AI-based detector for deepfakes could make to the challenge of responding to disinformation as a threat to democracy. Second, this paper will also investigate the implications of such a tool - which was developed, among other reasons, for security purposes - for the emerging European discourse on digital sovereignty in a global environment. While disinformation is surely not a new topic, recent technological developments relating to AI-generated deepfakes have increased the manipulative potential of video and audio-based contents spread online, making it a specific but important current challenge in the global and interconnected information context.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Opening Schools to Students’ Informal Digital Knowledge to Enable the Emancipatory Employment of Digital Media
Get PDFWhile classes become more heterogeneous and children grow up as digital natives, instruction is still characterized by an emphasis on middle-class children and analogue media. Moreover, national and international comparative studies have repeatedly shown that Germany in OECD comparisons often ranks last in terms of the level of digital learning opportunities in schools. A gap exists between children's lifeworld experiences and informal learning processes in a digital world on the one hand and digital learning opportunities at school on the other. Thus, schools do not offer content and digital infrastructure that links to students' informal digital knowledge. Therefore, there is a need to discuss how schools can integrate the emancipatory power of digitalization.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Instagram homophily datasets and codes
No full textThis file contains datasets and python codes related to the paper "Gender-Specific Homophily on Instagram and Implications on Information Spread"
Handling the hype: Implications of AI hype for public interest tech projects
Get PDFBased on theories of expectations of technology and empirical data from expert interviews and case studies, this research article explores how actors in the field of public interest technologies relate to and within the dynamics of AI hype. On an affirmative note, practitioners and experts see the potential that AI hype can serve their own purposes, e.g., through improved funding and support structures. At the same time, public interest tech actors distance themselves from the dynamics of AI hype and criticize it explicitly. Finally, the article discusses how engagement with AI hype and its impact affects society as a whole and, more specifically, society’s ability to develop and use technologies in response to societal problems