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Pandemic protesters on Telegram: How platform affordances and information ecosystems shape digital counterpublics
Get PDFThis study analyzes how platform affordances, their appropriation by movement actors, and these actors’ leveraging of information ecosystems—in combination—helped form a digital counterpublic during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on public communication data sent by more than 300 Telegram channels and group chats affiliated with the Querdenken movement over a 2-year period, and combines automated and manual text classification with network analysis. The study demonstrates how Telegram afforded connective and collective action in distinct ways that reflected the movement’s organizational structure and aims, as well as the impact of individual information-sharing on the process of movement-building itself. Accounting for time-dependent dynamics, the study also found that different parts of the counterpublic latched onto and sustained distinct information ecosystems to articulate their claims and mobilize contentious action.This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under grant numbers 16DII125, 16DII135, and 13N16049 (in the context of the call for proposals “civil security—societies in transition”)
Migrants’ Imaginaries and Awareness of Discrimination by Artificial Intelligence: A Conceptual Framework for Analysing Digital Literacy
Get PDFThis paper asks what skills migrants need to be able to deal with artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in a self-determined way in their everyday lives. We propose a conceptual framework to empirically identify migrant's awareness and perceptions of possible discrimination through AI. Following Bucher (2017, 40), we argue that by experiencing AI systems in their digital environments, people develop AI imaginaries that shape their attitudes, interactions, and practices with AI. We assume that experiences of discrimination evoke affects, feelings, and emotions that at first glance are not associated with AI technologies. The paper provides relevant research questions that address AI imaginaries. In addition to studying knowledge about and perceptions of AI, research should increasingly focus on users' attitudes towards AI, their evaluations of AI, and their feelings, emotions, and affects related to AI. Subsequently, we elaborate on dimensions of digital literacy based on these AI imaginaries. Finally, we will describe the digital skills that are necessary to confidently cope with discrimination by AI technologies.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“
COVID-19 from the Margins: Narrating the COVID-19 Pandemic Through Decoloniality and Multilinguism
Get PDFBorn as a multilingual blog in May 2020, 'COVID-19 from the Margins' has offered a space for authors to voice the silenced narratives of the COVID-19 pandemic in any language chosen and representing multiple South(s) of the world (Milan & Treré, 2019). The blog became an open-access book in February 2021, and since then it has travelled across the globe to bring to light narratives of devoiced groups during COVID-19, generating debate on stories narrated by, amongst others, forced migrants, gig workers, ethnic minorities, people in economic poverty, and survivors of domestic violence. The project is divided into five sections - "Human Invisibilities and the Politics of Counting," "Perpetuated Vulnerabilities and Inequalities," "Datafied Social Policies," "Technological Reconfigurations in the Datafied Pandemic," and "Pandemic Solidarities and Resistance from Below" - which together contribute to the decolonial, multilingual project of narrating the COVID-19 pandemic through the voices of the systematically silenced. In this short paper, we reflect on the 'COVID-19 from the Margins' experience and on its meaning towards a decolonial, multilingual narration of the COVID-19 pandemic.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“
Weizenbaum Panel: Politische Partizipation in Deutschland 2019–2023, WP1-19–WP5-23 [Public Use File, Version 1.0]
No full textDieser Datensatz enthält die kumulierten Befragungsdaten der Wellen 1–5 des Weizenbaum Panels zur öffentlichen Nachnutzung (Public Use). Das Weizenbaum Panel ist eine jährlich durchgeführte Telefonbefragung der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung in Deutschland ab 16 Jahren zu den Themen Mediennutzung, politische Einstellungen und politische Partizipation. Der Datensatz umfasst 5.039 Fälle und 636 Variablen. Aus Gründen der Anonymisierung wurden ausgewählte Variablen in diesem Datensatz aggregiert oder gelöscht.
Der vollständige Datensatz zur wissenschaftlichen Nachnutzung (Scientific Use) kann auf Anfrage von den Datengeber:innen bereitgestellt werden. Bitte wenden Sie sich dazu an: [email protected].
Alle **Fragebögen** und **Methodenberichte** zu diesem Datensatz sowie eine **Variablenübersicht** und eine Errata-Liste finden Sie unter: https://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/35
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##### Rollen
- – Erhebungsinstitute: Freie Universität Berlin / Weizenbaum-Institut; Institut für Umfragen, Analysen und DataScience GmbH (UADS)
- – Kontaktperson: Emmer, Martin
- – Projekleitung: Emmer, Martin (2019–)
- – Projektmanagement: Strippel, Christian (2021–); Porten-Cheé, Pablo (2019–2021)
- – Projektmitarbeit: Heger, Katharina (2021–); Jokerst, Sofie (2023); Leißner, Laura (2019–2022); Schätz, Nadja (2019–2020); Strippel, Christian (2019–2020)
- – Datenkuratierung: Heger, Katharina (2021–)
- – Forschungsgruppe: Weizenbaum Panel (2022–); Digital Citizenship (2019–2022)Das Weizenbaum Panel wird gefördert durch das BMBF – Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
Algorithmic Governmentality, Digital Sovereignty, and Agency Affordances: Extending the Possible Fields of Action
Get PDFIn today’s socio-technical constellations, our daily online and offline lives are increasingly governed by what can be termed algorithmic governmentality. Understood as the governing of the social based on the algorithmic processing of big data, algorithmic governmentality significantly limits human agency and individuals’ abilities to control data inputs and algorithmic outputs. An antidote and a solution to governance of this kind require assembling conditions for enabling digital sovereignty. Seen as a counter-conduct to governmentality, sovereignty concerns agency, control, autonomy, authority, self-reflection, and self-determination. Foregrounded on empirical research that relates specifically to platform algorithms, this article discusses the requirements for the digital sovereignty of individuals and the socio-technical conditions that should enable that sovereignty. By introducing and conceptualizing the notion of agency affordances, the article provides several illustrative examples of how this sovereignty can be inscribed through the technical and unfold via the societal.This publication 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”)
Defining the Metaverse: A Systematic Literature Review
Get PDFThe term Metaverse is emerging as a result of the late push by multinational technology conglomerates and a recent surge of interest in Web 3.0, Blockchain, NFT, and Cryptocurrencies. From a scientific point of view, there is no definite consensus on what the Metaverse will be like. This paper collects, analyzes, and synthesizes scientific definitions and the accompanying major characteristics of the Metaverse using the methodology of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Two revised definitions for the Metaverse are presented, both condensing the key attributes, where the first one is rather simplistic holistic describing ‘‘a three-dimensional online environment in which users represented by avatars interact with each other in virtual spaces decoupled from the real physical world’’. In contrast, the second definition is specified in a more detailed manner in the paper and further discussed. These comprehensive definitions offer specialized and general scholars an application within and beyond the scientific context of the system science, information system science, computer science, and business informatics, by also introducing open research challenges. Furthermore, an outlook on the social, economic, and technical implications is given, and the preconditions that are necessary for a successful implementation are discussed.This work was supported in part by the Research Project Age-Appropriate, Process-Oriented and Interactive Vocational Training in SMEs (API-KMU) which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research [Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)] under Grant 02L19A010, in part by the European Social Fund for Germany (ESF), in part by the BMBF-Project German Internet Institute under Grant 16DII137, and in part by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Project number 491466077
A centrality analysis of the Lightning Network
Get PDFBlockchain technology has a huge impact on our digital society by enabling a more decentralized economy and policy making. This decentralization is also pivotal in payment Payment channel networks (PCNs), including the Lightning Network, have emerged as a promising solution to the scalability challenges that many blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, grapple with. These PCNs, while innovative, also inherit the rigorous dependability demands of the blockchain. A pivotal aspect of this dependability is the need for a high degree of decentralization, essential for mitigating liquidity bottlenecks and on-path attacks.We acknowledge the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and netIDEE SCIENCE project P 33775-N (ReactNet) and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) , project 6G-RIC, grant 16KISK020K (6G-RIC), 2021–2025
Stochastic lies: How LLM-powered chatbots deal with Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine
Get PDFResearch on digital misinformation has turned its attention to large language models (LLMs) and their handling of sensitive political topics. Through an AI audit, we analyze how three LLM-powered chatbots (Perplexity, Google Bard, and Bing Chat) generate content in response to the prompts linked to common Russian disinformation narratives about the war in Ukraine. We find major differences between chatbots in the accuracy of outputs and the integration of statements debunking Russian disinformation claims related to prompts’ topics. Moreover, we show that chatbot outputs are subject to substantive variation, which can result in random user exposure to false information
A categorized multimodal TikTok dataset
Get PDFThis dataset encompasses 11242 entries of 5137 unique videos listed between the 31st of July and the 4th of August on the TikTok explore page (https://www.tiktok.com/explore). The page was accessed via a German IP address without being logged in. The data has been collected via the 4CAT Toolkit and the Zeeschuimer browser extension. The dataset contains the category and multimodal embeddings for each video.
**Intended Purpose**
The dataset is primarily intended for proof-of-concept studies, as a toy dataset to teach or to be used for seminar papers by students. Given the lack of a clear definition for each category by TikTok, the focus of such work might be to explore those definitions or to conduct work with a focus on methods. The multimodal embeddings allow for directly applying unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques.
**Contents**
The dataset consists of four zipped .csv files:
* – metadata.zip
* – text_embeddings.zip
* – audio_embeddings.zip
* – video_embedding.zip
**For further details, please consult the Data Report** (datenbericht_v2.pdf)
Sovereignty and its Outsiders: Data Sovereignty, Racism, and Immigration Control
Get PDFThe concept of sovereignty invokes a nation’s authority, autonomy, and power to act. Recent societal developments invite new questions about that concept. For example, on whose behalf is sovereignty declared, particularly when it comes to “data sovereignty”? How are the benefits and costs of data sovereignty distributed in a society? Data sovereignty signals that the data produced within a certain territory should be bound by the laws and rules of that territory. However, this article argues that people on the move (migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers) are excluded from claims to data sovereignty and treated as objects of datafied persecution. That is, they are outsiders to sovereign spaces, both geographic and datafied. To investigate this situation, this article explores the historical echoes of the term “sovereignty,” especially given that the concept was particularly invoked in colonial times as a nation-building tool, applied when colonies claimed their independence while at the same time establishing internal social hierarchies. This analysis suggests that race continues to represent a key element in the hi-tech exercise of sovereignty at the border, replicating colonial and extractivist injustices against groups that are increasingly vulnerable in contemporary societies.This publication 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”)