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Digital Twins in Healthcare for Citizens
Get PDFDigital twins are gaining attention in healthcare, especially in fields like hospital management, simulating surgeries, or providing personalized health. As digital replicas based on users' data, digital twins can inform citizens in-depth about their lifestyle, medical data, and biomedical data. Hence, there is the assumption that digital twins could facilitate preventative healthcare at home, bringing healthcare closer to citizens, yet there are underexamined ethical concerns. In this paper, we explore the ethics of digital twins based on citizens' perspectives on digital twins in healthcare via recent literature and research. Although digital twins have great potential, citizens have concerns about surveillance, data ownership, data accuracy, and personal and collective agency.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“
“Intervening Is a Good Thing but . . .”: The Role of Social Norms in Users’ Justifications of (Non-)Intervention Against Incivility
Get PDFUser intervention against incivility as social enforcement of democratic norms on social media platforms is considered an act of “good citizenship” by citizens and scholars alike. However, between ideals and behavior, multiple social norms are at play in shaping individuals’ sense of personal responsibility for intervening. This study explores the role of conflicting norms in situations requiring user intervention against online incivility. By combining the perspectives of norms as expectations and norms as cultural vocabularies, we investigate users’ salient norms, and how these norms influence users’ justifications for (non-)intervention. Based on qualitative interview data from Germany (N = 20), we identified three distinct reasoning patterns employed to justify (non-)intervention: the pragmatic, the dismissive, and the aspirational. By identifying fault lines, our typology points to normative origins of ambivalence related to user intervention. The findings offer insights into strategies to motivate intervention against online incivility.Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, grant number: 16DII114 provided financial support for the research and authorship of this article. The publication of the article was funded by the University of Mannheim
Algorithmic Management in the Food Delivery Sector – A Contested Terrain? Evidence from a Form-Level Case-Study on Algorithmic Management and Co-Determination
Get PDFForms of algorithmic management (AM) play an essential role in organizing food delivery work by deploying AI-based systems for coordinating driver routes. Given the risks of precarity and threats posed by AM that are typically related to (migrant) platform work, the question arises to what extent structures of co-determination are able to positively shape this type of work and the technologies involved. Based on an intense case-study in a large food delivery company, this paper is guided by three questions: (1) How is algorithm-based management and control used by the company? (2) How is it perceived by the couriers, also in relation to other aspects of their work? (3) What are the works council’s priorities, strategies, and achievements regarding co-determination practices? Contrary to the prevalent perception in the literature on the subject of AM, our analysis shows that human agency is still pivotal when algorithm-based systems are used to manage work processes. While data- and AM-related issues do not represent a central area of conflict, we find that co-determination rights in this domain can translate into a powerful bargaining resource of the works council with regard to the companies’ digital business model. Our study also shows that algorithmic management poses problems of non-transparency and information asymmetry, which calls for new forms and procedures of co-determination.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII121, 16DII122, 16DII123, 16DII124, 16DII125, 16DII126, 16DII127, 16DII128 – “Deutsches Internet-Institut”)
Europe’s Digital Sovereignty: An International Political Economy Conceptual Approach
Get PDFThis paper looks at conceptual approaches to digital sovereignty from an international political economy perspective, focusing on the state level. We consider the implications of the rise of the data economy and analyze different economic policy approaches to restoring and preserving Europe's digital sovereignty from market liberal and industrial policy perspectives. We conclude that networked sovereignty can optimally be attained by supporting the emergence and success of homegrown technology companies in a globalized data economy. Digital sovereignty can best be achieved by policy makers using a mix of market liberal and more proactive industrial policy instruments. The liberal focus on framework conditions is useful in refocusing policy makers' efforts on deepening the EU single market, while the industrial policy approach can be a suitable way of funding pilot projects in early-stage technology areas in partnership with industry and setting rules for newly emerging markets. State action is also necessary to avoid monopolies.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“
Process model forecasting and change exploration using time series analysis of event sequence data
Get PDFProcess analytics is a collection of data-driven techniques for, among others, making predictions for individual process instances or overall process models. At the instance level, various novel techniques have been recently devised, tackling analytical tasks such as next activity, remaining time, or outcome prediction. However, there is a notable void regarding predictions at the process model level. It is the ambition of this article to fill this gap. More specifically, we develop a technique to forecast the entire process model from historical event data. A forecasted model is a will-be process model representing a probable description of the overall process for a given period in the future. Such a forecast helps, for instance, to anticipate and prepare for the consequences of upcoming process drifts and emerging bottlenecks. Our technique builds on a representation of event data as multiple time series, each capturing the evolution of a behavioural aspect of the process model, such that corresponding time series forecasting techniques can be applied. Our implementation demonstrates the feasibility of process model forecasting using real-world event data. A user study using our Process Change Exploration tool confirms the usefulness and ease of use of the produced process model forecasts.This research was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders, Belgium under grant G039923N and KU Leuven, Belgium under project 3H200414. The research by Artem Polyvyanyy was in part supported by the Australian Research Council under project DP220101516. The research by Jan Mendling was supported by the Einstein Foundation Berlin under grant EPP-2019-524 and by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under grant 16DII133
Varieties of antigenderism: the politicization of gender issues across three European populist radical right parties
Get PDFThis research contributes to the study of populist radical right parties’ (PRRPs) role in gendered democratic backsliding by analyzing their articulation and symbolic representation of gender issues. We compare the politicization of gender issues across three European PRRPs, examining how context-specific gendered opportunity structures – the level of contestation of gender issues in their country, the resonance of antigenderism among their electorate, and their issue repertoire and historical trajectory – shape the extent and ways in which the German AfD, the Italian Lega and the Sweden Democrats politicize gender issues. We conduct a quantitative content analysis of PRRPs’ framing of gender issues and construct topic networks based on the parties’ Facebook and Twitter posts during the European Parliament election campaign 2019. We analyze the salience of gender issues, the broader topical context in which they are embedded, the specific gender issues addressed, and the parties’ positions on these issues. Our results show how context-specific gendered opportunities shape PRRPs’ national gender discourses: A low level of contestation, evidenced by a high public recognition and legal protection of gender and sexual equality, seems to foster a femonationalist framing, while antigenderist discourse is less pronounced in such a context. Instead, a higher level of contestation, expressed in a lower public recognition and legal protection of gender and sexual equality, seems to foster antigenderist discourse. A transnational femonationalist framing, shared by all analyzed parties, relates to a common nativist ideological core
Challenges and Perspectives of Hate Speech Research
Get PDFThis book is the result of a conference that could not take place. It is a collection of 26 texts that address and discuss the latest developments in international hate speech research from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. This includes case studies from Brazil, Lebanon, Poland, Nigeria, and India, theoretical introductions to the concepts of hate speech, dangerous speech, incivility, toxicity, extreme speech, and dark participation, as well as reflections on methodological challenges such as scraping, annotation, datafication, implicity, explainability, and machine learning. As such, it provides a much-needed forum for cross-national and cross-disciplinary conversations in what is currently a very vibrant field of research
The European Strive for Digital Sovereignty: Have We Lost Our Belief in the Global Promises of the ‘Free and Open Internet’?
Get PDFDigital sovereignty is the buzzword of the hour in European digital policy debates. But what if it was something more fundamental than just a new policy principle? This short essay analyses shifts in the belief system that underlies our idea of the global Internet in order to better understand the European digital sovereignty debate within its historical and political context. For this purpose, it identifies three different types of dependency that shape today’s global digital order and explains how the perceptions of these dependencies motivate the EU’s claims for more digital self-determination. What come apparent is that the liberal imaginary of an ‘open and free Internet’ could not hold up to reality and that we are in urgent need of alternative visions for a globally interconnected world. The European digital sovereignty debate can be interpreted as the first stage in the search for such an alternative. Whether it will be able to fill the gap, remains questionable
Delegated Regulation on Data Access Provided for the Digital Services Act
Get PDFResponse to the Call for Evidence DG CNECT-CNECT F2 by the European CommissionThis 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“
Blame It on the Algorithm? Russian Government-Sponsored Media and Algorithmic Curation of Political Information on Facebook
Get PDFPrevious research highlighted how algorithms on social media platforms can be abused to disseminate disinformation. However, less work has been devoted to understanding the interplay between Facebook news curation mechanisms and propaganda content. To address this gap, we analyze the activities of RT (formerly, Russia Today) on Facebook during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. We use agent-based algorithmic auditing and frame analysis to examine what content RT published on Facebook and how it was algorithmically curated in Facebook News Feeds and Search Results. We find that RT’s strategic framing included the promotion of anti-Biden leaning content, with an emphasis on antiestablishment narratives. However, due to algorithmic factors on Facebook, individual agents were exposed to eclectic RT content without an overarching narrative. Our findings contribute to the debate on computational propaganda by highlighting the ambiguous relationship between government-sponsored media and Facebook algorithmic curation, which may decrease the exposure of users to propaganda and at the same time increase confusion