Weizenbaum Library (Weizenbaum Institute)
Not a member yet
864 research outputs found
Sort by
Digidem Digest - Issue 16 (July 2019)
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
Surfing in sound: Sonification of hidden web tracking
Get PDFWeb tracking is found on 90% of common websites. It allows online behavioral analysis which can reveal insights to sensitive personal data of an individual. Most users are not aware of the amout of web tracking happening in the background. This paper contributes a sonification-based approach to raise user awareness by conveying information on web tracking through sound while the user is browsing the web. We present a framework for live web tracking analysis, conversion to Open Sound Control events and sonification. The amount of web tracking is disclosed by sound each time data is exchanged with a web tracking host. When a connection to one of the most prevalent tracking companies is established, this is additionally indicated by a voice whispering the company name. Compared to existing approaches on web tracking sonification, we add the capability to monitor any network connection, including all browsers, applications and devices. An initial user study with 12 participants showed empirical support for our main hypothesis: exposure to our sonification significantly raises web tracking awareness
The Impacts of Digital Transformation on Regional Labour Markets in Germany: Substitution Potentials of Occupational Tasks
Get PDFThe digital transformation may have large impact on the labour market. In order to determine the extent to which occupational tasks are currently replaceable by computers or computer-controlled machines, Dengler and Matthes (2015b, 2018b, 2018a) calculated substitution potentials of occupations. In this paper, we investigate the impact of digital transformation on different regions in Germany by analysing substitution potentials of occupational tasks on two different regional levels: administrative districts and regional labour markets. On the level of districts, it becomes clear that urban service centres and some rural areas have a much lower share of employees working in a highly substitutable occupation compared with manufacturing regions. In many cases, low and high values cancel each other out within regional labour markets. Nevertheless, the values still range from 15 to 38 percent. In high value regions, close monitoring of future labour market developments and (further) education appear to be of particular importance to meet the challenges of the digital transformation.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“
Inequalities of Professional Learning on Social Media Platforms
Get PDFProfessional learning on social media is generally framed as unproblematic, but the transition to these platforms marks a change as professionals’ work is conditioned by their logic and economy. In this paper, our focus is how problematic inequalities of teachers’ professional learning around access, participation and resources are produced as their professional exchanges is formed by social media participation. Three aspects of inequality have been examined. First, the performance of teachers’ (un)equal professional opportunities; second, (un)equal access to resources; and third, (un)equal existential opportunities for professional development. We draw on examination of three-years of API data from a large teacher Facebook-group asking, who can participate (gender, location), what voices are heard (status, language), and how does the social media platform condition professional exchange and participation? Our results consider the opportunities and costs for teachers as individuals, professionals and intellectuals. They reveal problematic temporal aspects such as work intensification, and limited professional exchange, partly conditioned by the platform functionality.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“
The Selective Catalyst: Internet use as a mediator of citizenship norms' effects on political participation
Get PDFWe test the mediating effect of media use on the effects of citizenship norms - shared ideas of what a good citizen is - on political participation. We do so by comparing France and Finland, two countries with distinct media trust levels. Results support the notion that Internet use works as a selective catalyst of political participation, as it is enhanced merely by engaged citizenship norms but not by dutiful citizenship norms. Within the nexus of citizenship norms, media use, and political participation, this article contributes to a better understanding of the normative premises for the Internet use to promote political engagement within differing media contexts.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“
The Right to Work and Finding Work: the Inaccessibility of Private and Public Sector Career Portals
Get PDFThe right to participation in society for people with disabilities is relatively well established in national and international law and convention (UNCRPD), and increasingly in social norms. These rights include the right to work. The majority of job opportunities today are advertised and applied for almost exclusively online in digital form. In late 2017 we performed both automated testing of career sites against WCAG 2.0 and BITV standards and a multi-day detailed laboratory observation of visually impaired and blind testers applying for jobs across 10 German organisations in the public and private sectors. The tests note significant problems with the accessibility of the career sites, both in terms of standards compliance and practical use testing. This study illustrates the barriers that digital technologies can create for people with disabilities. This paper will highlight and classify these issues, explore their causes, and briefly suggest improvements for software developers, employers and regulators.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“
Proceedings of the Weizenbaum Conference 2019. Challenges of Digital Inequality - Digital Education, Digital Work, Digital Life
No full textWith notion to radical changes in today’s labor markets and especially for lower income jobs with a less required proficiency; this paper has faced a to gig economy labor challenge to propose a solution which achieves to multi goals obsessively eyed on the future society which needs cleaner cities, crowd working synergy based on sharing economy trends and fairer incomes and motivations following sustainability goals. The proposed last mile delivery solution called “NaCL” will be implemented in the city of Bremerhaven as a sustainable crowd sourced last mile logistics solution to be evaluated as sustainable business model in the field.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“
Beyond Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers: The Integrative Potential of the Internet
Get PDFAre online audiences today fragmented into echo chambers or filter bubbles? Do users only see what digital platforms (like search engines or social media) let them see? And if so, what are the consequences for the cohesion of a society? Concerns like these abound in recent years. They attest to widely held assumptions about a negative influence of digital media or even the Internet in general on society. Empirical studies on these phenomena are, however, not as unequivocal. To understand why results from previous research are so far inconclusive, this study investigates the role of the Internet for social integration from a more general point of view. The integrative potential of the Internet is assessed to compare it with other media and ultimately better understand to what degree and due to which factors the Internet may or may not help bring society together. Using survey data, clickstream data on actual usage of websites, and data on content structures, the present work investigates how user behavior and structural features of the Internet determine its positive or negative effects on social integration. The results reveal that the Internet in general is not as bad as popular accounts of digital fragmentation may suggest. How much integrative potential can be realized via online offerings, however, depends on numerous factors on the side of the users as well as content and platform providers
Media Bias Towards African-americans Before and After the Charlottesville Rally
Get PDFAfrican-Americans are still experiencing racial discrimination rooted in structural bias in US American society. Research has shown that this behaviour can be reduced if individuals are made conscious of their bias, but little is known about these mechanisms on a societal level. Envisaging the white-supremacist Charlottesville rally in 2017 as an event that rendered American society conscious of its racism, we scrutinise whether racial bias in the digital media has changed, comparing levels of pre- and post-Charlottesville bias. We fit word embedding models to a broad sample of largely US media and quantify bias by calculating cosine similarities between terms for black or white actors and positive or negative character traits. We find no differences in positive character traits after Charlottesville. However, African-Americans are associated substantially less with negative character traits post-Charlottesville, while white actors are semantically closer to negative traits.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“
Provenance Management over Linked Data Streams
Get PDFProvenance describes how results are produced starting from data sources, curation, recovery, intermediate processing, to the final results. Provenance has been applied to solve many problems and in particular to understand how errors are propagated in large-scale environments such as Internet of Things, Smart Cities. In fact, in such environments operations on data are often performed by multiple uncoordinated parties, each potentially introducing or propagating errors. These errors cause uncertainty of the overall data analytics process that is further amplified when many data sources are combined and errors get propagated across multiple parties. The ability to properly identify how such errors influence the results is crucial to assess the quality of the results. This problem becomes even more challenging in the case of Linked Data Streams, where data is dynamic and often incomplete. In this paper, we introduce methods to compute provenance over Linked Data Streams. More specifically, we propose provenance management techniques to compute provenance of continuous queries executed over complete Linked Data streams. Unlike traditional provenance management techniques, which are applied on static data, we focus strictly on the dynamicity and heterogeneity of Linked Data streams. Specifically, in this paper we describe: i) means to deliver a dynamic provenance trace of the results to the user, ii) a system capable to execute queries over dynamic Linked Data and compute provenance of these queries, and iii) an empirical evaluation of our approach using real-world datasets.This research is part of the PROVDS project, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – 32322350