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Digidem Digest - Issue 35 (March/April 2021)
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
Mythos Blockchain: Zwischen Hoffnung und Realität
Get PDFVertrauen schaffen, vermittelnde Institutionen oder auch gleich den Staat ersetzen und das Internet revolutionieren – die mit dem »Mythos Blockchain« verbundenen Ideen schienen keine Grenzen zu kennen. Gut vier Jahre nach dem ersten ÖFIT-White Paper zum Thema wird es Zeit für eine Bestandsaufnahme, was von den Ideen übriggeblieben ist. Zusammen mit unseren Kollegen vom Weizenbaum-Institut geben wir einen Überblick über die Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre. Ein gemeinsames Verständnis vom Stand der Technologie ist wichtig, um die beispielhaften Anwendungsfälle analysieren zu können. Daraus werden Schlüsselfaktoren kristallisiert und Handlungsempfehlungen für den zukünftigen Einsatz der vielfältigen Technologiebausteine abgeleitet.Dieses White Paper ist in Kooperation mit dem Weizenbaum-Institut entstanden. Das Weizenbaum-Institut ist ein vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) gefördertes Verbundprojekt (Förderkennzeichen: 16DII128 – »Deutsches Internet-Institut«)
Toward a Transnational Information Ecology on the Right? Hyperlink Networking among Right-Wing Digital News Sites in Europe and the United States
Get PDFThe recent rise of a more transnationally networked political right across Europe and the United States has been accompanied by an emerging alternative digital news infrastructure through which information circulates and shared epistemologies are established. This paper examines the extent to which digital news sites on the right are interconnected within and across countries. It further explores which additional sites serve as transnationally shared reference points of such news ecology on a transnational scale. To do so, we investigate hyperlink networks between alternative right-wing online news sites (RNS) in six western democracies (Austria, Germany, United States, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden). Our analysis draws on hyperlink data harvested from 65 RNS for three months in 2018. The results show that RNS do establish interlinked alternative right-wing news ecologies, as they connect to likeminded RNS within and across borders. Furthermore, we see substantial variation across countries, where RNS from countries with less established alternative right-wing news infrastructure are more likely to link transnationally to RNS. The United States represents an outlier in that it features the largest and domestically most integrated network of RNS, while U.S. sites function as hubs for transnational connections from European RNS. Apart from connections between RNS, we find that legacy news media are crucial transnationally shared reference points. We conclude that rather than presenting an insulated, alternative sphere, the emerging digital news ecology on the right seeks to link up to the broader information environment across borders
The Internet has coped well with Covid-19, but problems remain: Evidence to House of Lords Committee exploring the impact of Covid-19
Get PDFIn this contribution to a 'call for evidence' by the House of Lords (UK), we investigate the pivotal role of the Internet during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Internet has enabled many to work from home, to shop and be educated online, and keep in touch with colleagues and friends. The swift move online of many activities raised concerns about the robustness and resilience of the Internet. Contrary to some concerns, expressed when national lockdowns were being imposed, the Internet did not collapse. However, while the Internet allowed many to work from home etc., not everyone has access to the Internet. Furthermore, there are many differences between those who do have access to the Internet - quite simply, some are able to access the Internet using connections that are a lot faster than others. This shapes what businesses and individuals can do online, with those with slower connections or connections shared between many users being disadvantaged compared to those whose connectivity is better. Finally, it is necessary to remember that not everything can move online. Some occupations, such as those with a greater knowledge content, are more amenable to the move online than those with a larger labour (physical) component.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“
Trust in blockchain-based systems
Get PDFTrust can best be understood as a relational attribute between (1) a social actor and other actor(s) (interpersonal trust) and / or (2) actors and institutions (institutional or systemic trust) and (3) institutions and (trusting) actors (trust as shared expectations), where institutional frameworks define the nature and strength of trust relationships between different actors
Umfrage zu Forschungsdatenmanagement am Weizenbaum-Institut
No full textThis dataset contains responses to a survey on open data and open access amongst members of the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society which ran from 30 August to 21 September 2021. The survey elicited 39 valid responses out of 181 potential respondents working at the institute.
Contributors (according to CRediT):
Roland Toth Roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Validation.
Julian Vuorimäki Roles: Conceptualization, Investigation, Project Administration, Validation.
Sonja Schimmler Roles: Conceptualization, Supervision.
Martin Krzywdzinski Roles: Conceptualization, Supervision.
Sascha Friesike Roles: Conceptualization, Supervision.
Christoph Neuberger Roles: Conceptualization, Supervision.
Claudia Oellers Roles: Conceptualization, Project Administration, Supervision
A review of technologies for collaborative online information seeking. On the contribution of collaborative argumentation
Get PDFIn everyday life, people seek, evaluate, and use online sources to underpin opinions and make decisions. While education must promote the skills people need to critically question the sourcing of online information, it is important, more generally, to understand how to successfully promote the acquisition of any skills related to seeking online information. This review outlines technologies that aim to support users when they collaboratively seek online information. Upon integrating psychological–pedagogical approaches on trust in and the sourcing of online information, argumentation, and computer-supported collaborative learning, we reviewed the literature (N= 95 journal articles) on technologies for collaborative online information seeking. The technologies we identified either addressed collaborative online information seeking as an exclusive process for searching for online information or, alternatively, addressed online information seeking within the context of a more complex learning process. Our review was driven by three main research questions: We aimed to understand whether and how the studies considered 1) the role of trust and critical questioning in the sourcing of online information, 2) the learning processes at play when information seekers engage in collaborative argumentation, and 3) what affordances are offered by technologies that support users’ collaborative seeking of online information. The reviewed articles that focused exclusively on technologies for seeking online information primarily addressed aspects of cooperation (e.g., task management), whereas articles that focused on technologies for integrating the processes of information seeking into the entire learning processes instead highlighted aspects of collaborative argumentation (e.g., exchange of multiple perspectives and critical questioning in argumentation). Seven of the articles referred to trust as an aspect of seekers’ sourcing strategies. We emphasize how researchers’, users’, and technology developers’ consideration of collaborative argumentation could expand the benefits of technological support for seeking online information
Re-Defining Borders Online: Russia’s Strategic Narrative on Internet Sovereignty
Get PDFOver the past decades, internet governance has developed in a tug‐of‐war between the democratic, transnational nature of the web, and attempts by national governments to put cyberspace under control. Recently, the idea of digital sovereignty has started to increasingly gain more supporters among nation states. This article is a case study on the Russian concept of a “sovereign internet.” In 2019, the so‐called law on sustainable internet marked a new milestone in the development of RuNet. Drawing on document analysis and expert interviews, I reconstruct Russia’s strategic narrative on internet sovereignty and its evolution over time. I identify the main factors that have shaped the Russian concept of sovereignty, including domestic politics, the economy, international relations, and the historical trajectory of the Russian segment of the internet. The article places the Russian case in a global context and discusses the importance of strategic narratives of digital sovereignty for the future of internet governanceThis work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, funding code 16DII114, in the form of a fellowship of the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society
Die Digitalisierung von Lebensstilpolitik. Wie Soziale Medien lebensstilpolitisches Engagement prägen
Get PDFPolitical participation is fundamentally changing under the influence of digital media. While this dynamic has already been intensively researched for election campaigns and protest movements, alternative forms of political participation embedded in everyday life are rarely the focus of communication studies. This paper theorizes the concept of lifestyle politics as a form of political participation and discusses the interplay between lifestyle politics and social media. It begins with the argument that lifestyle politics is systematically defined along the categories of intention and field of action and then further differentiated along the categories of action strategy and action frame. Along these lines, previous research and other case studies are used to discuss the ways in which social media shape and influence various forms of lifestyle politics. The study shows that on the one hand, social media reduce information and participation costs and, as a consequence, support the engagement in lifestyle politics. On the other hand, social media expand the repertoire of lifestyle politics by affording-unlike ever media forms in the past-the technical infrastructure for the exercise of persuasive and collectively oriented lifestyle politics
Digidem Digest - Issue 33 (January 2021)
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