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Digidem Digest - Issue 50 (September 2022)
No full textThe Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter
Toward a Socioeconomic Company-Level Theory of Automation at Work
Get PDFThe current understanding of automation is dominated by “routine-biased technological change” (RBTC). This theory predicts a strong automation dynamic in jobs with high routine-task share and a polarization of employment structures. While RBTC theory has many merits, this paper develops a systematic critique of the theory and a counter-proposal of a socioeconomically grounded company-level theory of the automation of work. It distinguishes between feasibility conditions of automation, technology choices, and social outcomes. With regard to feasibility conditions, the relevant factor is not routine-task intensity but the interaction between product architecture (product complexity) and process complexity. Which technology choices are made in this feasibility space is in turn influenced by companies’ profit strategies and power relations between management and labor. The social outcomes of automation depend on these technology choices, but also on managerial strategies pursued in the restructuring of organizational roles and skills. These managerial strategies are shaped by national institutional systems
The paradox of knowing more and less: Audience metrics and the erosion of epistemic standards on the internet
Get PDFDer Journalismus ist für moderne Demokratien wichtig, weil er valides Wissen über aktuelle Ereignisse in Form von Nachrichten produziert. Gesellschaftlich akzeptierte epistemische Standards und die professionelle Objektivitätsnorm tragen zum gesellschaftlichen Wissensvorrat bei und ermöglichen fundierte Entscheidungen. Ergänzt wird diese journalistische Funktion der Umweltbeobachtung durch das Wissen über das Publikum. Das Wissen über das Publikum bestimmt sowohl die Erwartungen des Journalismus als auch jene der Rezipierenden an das Mitpublikum. Es ermöglicht die Herausbildung gemeinsamer epistemischer Standards, wodurch sich das Risiko von Kritik bei der Teilnahme am öffentlichen Diskurs verringert. Die veränderten Möglichkeiten und auch Notwendigkeiten der Publikumsbeobachtung im Internet haben den Weg dafür geebnet, dass sich Redaktionen mit maßgeschneiderten epistemischen Standards an das erwartete Publikum wenden. Ein solcher zielgruppenspezifischer Zuschnitt epistemischer Standards steht im Gegensatz zu geteilten Normen und hat zum Paradoxon geführt, dass die Zunahme des Wissens über das Publikum möglicherweise mit weniger gemeinsam geteiltem Wissen über aktuelle Ereignisse einhergeht, weil professionelle Standards nicht mehr geteilt werden. Auf der Grundlage dieser Diagnose diskutieren wir zwei mögliche Zukunftspfade für epistemische Standards im Internet: einen negativen, bei dem die Polarisierung aufgrund einer verstärkten Identifikation mit epistemisch distinkten Zielgruppen zunehmen könnte, und einen positiven, bei dem diskursive Räume einen institutionalisierten Diskurs epistemischer Standards zwischen Journalismus und Publikum ermöglichen.Journalism is crucial to modern democracies in that it provides valid knowledge about current events in the form of news. Through shared epistemic standards and the professional norm of objectivity, journalism helps to generate societal knowledge and to make informed decisions. Yet, this surveillance function is also driven by knowledge about audiences. Knowledge about audiences informs both journalism’s and mutual recipients’ expectations toward anticipated audiences. It allows to gauge shared epistemic standards and thus to reduce risks of criticism when participating in public discourse. Online, changes in possibilities and necessities to monitor audiences, however, have paved the way to engage in a mode of addressing more tailored standards of anticipated audiences. Such epistemic tribalism contrasts widely shared epistemic standards of professional journalism and has yielded a paradox in which an increase in knowledge about audiences possibly leads to less common knowledge about current events because epistemic standards are no longer shared across the public. Based on this diagnose, we offer two potential pathways for the future of epistemic standards on the internet. A negative one where polarization will benefit from an intensified identification with epistemic tribes and a positive one where discursive spaces will allow for an institutionalized rebalancing of epistemic standards between journalism and audiences
Anything Goes? Youth, News, and Democratic Engagement in the Roaring 2020s
Get PDFIn the modern world, every person will come of age in a future that is hard to foresee. However, the way citizens born today will navigate their future world will be affected by the context and the institutions that structure the world of their young life. Maybe more importantly than ever, the technologies and the information environment they grow up with shape the ways in which today’s youngsters are socialised into the political world. Youth is a reference point that can reveal two important things: the past years of a cohort's development and an outlook into the future. Every generation is specifically shaped by their formative years which in turn will influence the society in which they come of age, once they enter the job market and end up in positions of responsibility and decision-making power
Emerging positions of German firms in the industrial internet of things. A global technological ecosystem perspective
Get PDFThe industrial internet of things (IIoT) has created entirely new inter-firm competitive and collaborative dynamics that focus on the supply of digital infrastructures, services and platforms for industrial users. These dynamics typically involve machinery builders, information technology suppliers and traditional technology buyers from various asset-intensive sectors. Given the global character of IIoT technology, transnationally relevant inter-firm arrangements have emerged for which we still lack a conceptually grounded understanding. This study addresses this research gap from the German perspective by combining the concepts of global value chains and complex technical systems. Empirically, we develop a multiple case study of established German firms that have provided IIoT technologies in the domain of ‘smart manufacturing.’ We investigate the firms’ evolving positions within the multi-layered IIoT stack and explore their technological dependency on global cloud-infrastructure suppliers. Second, we put the case study into the context of the recent German industrial-policy initiatives related to the discourse of ‘digital sovereignty’, which attempt to improve the positions of domestic actors vis-àvis the multi-national tech companies. Conceptually, this study offers the framework of global technological ecosystems as a new perspective on the transnational platform economy, which highlights the enabling character of global-scale digital infrastructures and acknowledges active involvement of non-firm actors in ecosystem governance
Van Alst, Niklas (2021): Die USA, Deutschland und der Fall Huawei. Zur Geopolitik und Geoökonomie des Internets: Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich
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A sociology of knowledge perspective on information operations
Get PDFInformation operations, which are considered part of information warfare, feature prominently in contemporary debates on the quality of democracy, international relations, and the national security of highly connected democracies. However, the vectors of attack and success conditions for information warfare remain unclear, as well as the strategic motivations of malevolent actors. Alarmist voices in public debate and scholarly discourse often build their assumptions on atomistic and individualistic misconceptions of knowledge. In this paper, we introduce a perspective based on the sociology of knowledge. We utilize this framework with a mix of quantitative and qualitative text analysis methods and present a comparative study of news coverage during the 2019 European election campaigns in two countries, Germany and France. We contrast the news stream of RT (formerly Russia Today), an outlet widely perceived as a vehicle for Russian information operations, with two types of established media per case: quality press and tabloid. Results show that RT, while generally following the beaten track of public discourse, particularly emphasizes international affairs topics in its news coverage. For these subjects, we find divergent framing seeking to support Russian foreign interests in comparison with established news outlets
Entscheidungsträger im Internet: Private Entscheidungsstrukturen und Plattformregulierung
No full textSoziale Netzwerke, Zahlungsdienste, Gaming-Plattformen – sie alle verfügen über ausdifferenzierte Regelwerke zur Nutzung ihrer Angebote. Ebenso komplex sind die Systeme, mit denen diese privaten Akteure ihre Regeln durchsetzen. Automatisierte, menschliche oder hybride Entscheidungsstrukturen sollen eine effiziente und gerechte Regeldurchsetzung gewährleisten. Auf Grund der hohen Relevanz dieser Plattformen versuchen aktuelle Regulierungsvorhaben wie der Digital Services Act für klare Vorgaben bei diesen privaten Entscheidungsstrukturen zu sorgen. Der Band versammelt empirische und theoretische Beiträge, die Fragen der Institutionalisierung, Legitimität und Konsequenzen dieser Entwicklung auf den Grund gehen.Die Veröffentlichung der Druckausgabe sowie die Open Access-Veröffentlichung der elektronischen Fassung wurde ermöglicht mit Unterstützung durch das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF). Förderkennzeichen: 16DII112 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut
Priming creativity: Doing math reduces creativity and happiness whereas playing short online games enhance them
Get PDFCreative thinking is an indispensable cognitive skill that is becoming increasingly important. In the present research, we tested the impact of games on creativity and emotions in a between-subject online experiment with four conditions (N=658). (1) participants played a simple puzzle game that allowed many solutions (priming divergent thinking); (2) participants played a short game that required one fitting solution (priming convergent thinking); (3) participants performed mental arithmetic; (4) passive control condition. Results show that divergent and convergent creativity were higher after playing games and lower after mental arithmetic. Positive emotions did not function as a mediator, even though they were also heightened after playing the games and lower after mental arithmetic. However, contrary to previous research, we found no direct effect of emotions, creative self-efficacy, and growth- vs. fixed on creative performance. We discuss practical implications for digital learning and application settings.This research project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Funding Number: 16DII127)