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Editorial: Volume 2, Issue 1
Get PDFThis second issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society brings together four contributions that examine the role of actors and regulation in processes of digitalization from the perspective of different disciplines. The topics include the role of the Silicon Valley discourse on entrepreneurship in legitimizing a specific model of work in the IT industry, the particularities of the European platform regulation approach, the development and enforcement problems of copyright liability regulation in Germany, and the development and regulation of automation processes in the workplace
Federated Blockchain Systems: A better trade-off between sustainability and decentralization?
Get PDFBlockchain-based systems are enjoying unbroken popularity. Different economic and social actors are investigating their application for fostering decentralization and separation of power. Whether a blockchain-based system can live up to such goals is heavily determined by the choice of a consensus protocol – the rules by which participants agree on what gets added to the blockchain. Bitcoin’s consensus protocol is inherently decentralization-enabling, at a notoriously high ecological cost. So-called permissioned protocols, while incomparably more efficient, are dismissed as being closed-off and "centralized". Federated blockchain systems represent a middle ground between these two extremes and promise to offer openness and security without sacrificing ecological sustainability. As a rough approximation, their approach can be described as bootstrapping consensus from a web of trust. In this overview article, after a short review of the Bitcoin approach and possible alternatives to it, we introduce the ideas behind federated blockchain systems and discuss their impact on future blockchain systems.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“
Digital Sequence Information between Benefit-Sharing and Open Data
Get PDFCurrently, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are negotiating a strategic plan to save biodiversity. One crucial element of an agreement is the question of whether and how digital sequence information (DSI) is subject to access and benefit-sharing from the utilization of genetic resources, one main instrument of the CBD. In the EU, the Open Data Directive (ODD) of 2019 and the recently adopted Data Governance Act (DGA) already cover research data and to some extent DSI. An analysis of the ODD and the DGA throws a spotlight on the legal uncertainty of utilizing DSI and reveals systemic tensions between open data principles and benefit-sharing restrictions on non-commercial use. It also suggests that a future benefit-sharing mechanism for DSI should avoid distinguish- ing between commercial and non-commercial use upstream, but should instead favor a solution, which imposes benefit-sharing obligations further downstream or outside of the DSI life cycle
The Civic Internet of Things as a socio-technical object. Studies on community-based environmental monitoring, sustained civic engagement and new opportunities in journalism.
Get PDF**Deutsch**
In dieser Dissertation wurden Internet of Things (IoT) Technologien, wie Sensoren und ihre Anwendungen, aus einer soziotechnischen Perspektive mit Schwerpunkt auf zivilgesellschaftliche (engl. civic) Zwecke für die Verwendung der Technologien erforscht. Das Ziel der Arbeit ist es, ein tiefergehendes Verständnis vom Civic IoT und seinen gesellschaftlichen Transformationspotenzial zu erlangen. Die übergreifende Forschungsfrage lautet: Was sind die gesellschaftlichen Implikationen des technologischen Objekts Civic IoT? Drei Anwendungsbereiche, welche als hochrelevant eingestuft wurden, werden in dieser Arbeit studiert: gemeinschaftliche (engl. community-based) Umweltbeobachtung, nachhaltiges Engagement von Civic-Tech-Initiativen und der „Journalism of Things“.
Diese Dissertation ist eine kumulative Arbeit und umfasst drei begutachtete wissenschaftliche Publikationen.**English**
In the presented work, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, like sensors and their applications, have been investigated from a socio-technical perspective focusing on civic purposes of the technologies’ use. The aim of the work is to gain a better understanding of civic IoT and its transformative potential for society. Therefore, the overarching research question is: What are the societal implications of the technological object civic IoT? Three application areas identified as highly relevant have been studied: community-based environmental monitoring, sustained engagement of civic tech initiatives, and the “Journalism of Things.”
This dissertation is a cumulative work comprising three peer-reviewed scientific publications
Weizenbaum Panel: Politische Partizipation in Deutschland 2022, WP4-22 [Methodenbericht]
Get PDFDer hier zum Download bereitstehende Methodenbericht enthält zentrale Informationen zur vierten Befragungswelle im Erhebungszeitraum von Anfang Oktober bis Mitte Dezember 2022
Feminist women’s online political participation. Empowerment through feminist political attitudes or feminist identity?
Get PDFCitizens in modern democracies have a continuously expanding set of tools at their disposal through which they seek to exercise influence on politics, including digital modes of participation. However, the usage of these tools is still gendered to the disadvantage of women. Feminist attitudes have been shown to have a positive impact on women’s political participation, yet this effect is deeply interwoven with the empowering effect of a feminist identity. Based on an online survey of more than 300 German female Internet users self-labeling as feminists, we develop a comprehensive measure of a feminist identity and analyze the interplay of three distinct sets of feminist attitudes and a feminist identity on online political participation. To gain a fine-grained understanding of the impact of feminist cognitions on online political participation, we differentiate general political online behaviors from those geared toward women’s rights and feminist objectives. We find a feminist identity to be a strong predictor of both types of online political participation, with a stronger effect on feminist online participation. Our findings provide important insights into the empowering role of a feminist identity on women’s political behavior on the Internet
Digitalization and organizational change during the Covid-19 crisis (Data and Codebook)
Get PDFThe data set is based on a survey of companies conducted to investigate the extent to which the pandemic led to a strategic reorientation of digitalization measures in companies. The aim was to investigate whether digitalization measures were newly established and intensified, in which areas digitalization took place, and how the digitalization measures differed depending on the company’s level of digitalization, sector, and size.
#### Methods
The survey was realized as CATI by the market research company Hopp Marktforschung with the support of VDI/VDE Innovation+Technik GmbH (Marc Bovenschulte and Michael Nerger). The survey was conducted in Germany in two waves: in July and August 2021 and September and October 2022. The survey included 540 companies in the first wave and 605 companies in the second wave. 120 companies participated in both waves. The respondents belonged to the top and middle management of the companies (e.g. head of division). The survey was conducted in two waves in order to examine differences between companies' approaches at the beginning and later in the course of the pandemic and to check whether companies’ strategies solidified over time or whether they were just short-term reactions
Pilot with Sana Ahmad, Bianca Herlo, and Lena Ulbricht
No full textThis first episode introduces the hosts of the podcast, who are Berlin based researchers from the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. They introduce themselves and explain why they look at digitalized societies through an intersectional feminist perspective. They see the podcast as a way to listen to voices that are often silenced when talking about the digital transformation of societies, and to take seriously the personal views and experiences of their future guests in order to challenge the aura of objectivity of digital technologies that is dominant in public and academic discourse
Journalismus und Plattformen als vermittelnde Dritte in der digitalen Öffentlichkeit
Get PDFThe digital transformation has fundamentally changed relationships of observation and influence in the public sphere. In traditional mass media, professional journalism mediates between sources and audiences and makes publication decisions alone. On the internet, this gatekeeper paradigm has been partly replaced by a platform-based network paradigm, in which constellations are more diverse, dynamic, and often unmediated. The role of mediating third parties in actor constellations as well as in intrasystemic and intersystemic relations is discussed. In this context, the work of Georg Simmel is taken up in two ways: Social forms or modes of interaction help to systematize the dynamics between actors. In addition, Simmel’s approach to the mediating third party is revisited. In the network paradigm, mediation includes moderation and navigation in addition to news provision. Numerous symptoms of the crisis in the digital public sphere raise the question of the need for reform of journalism and platforms