Weizenbaum Library (Weizenbaum Institute)
Not a member yet
864 research outputs found
Sort by
Sustainable Labor Conditions in the GIG-Economy. Case Study: Sustainable Crowdlogistics (NACL)
Get PDFWith 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“
Citizen Science and the Dissolution of Inequalities in Scientific Knowledge Production
Get PDFRecently, a larger public has started to critically discuss scientific knowledge and its role in political decision making. In this discussion, scientific and civic epistemologies are put into connection with each other. Just as post-democratic theory argues in relation to political decisions, the production of scientific knowledge is criticized as a non-inclusive process, too. The Citizen Science movement tries to resolve this deficit by involving citizens into research. In this paper, we introduce agency as an analytical category into the discussion, focussing on how participants are represented in Citizen Science. We highlight the interdependencies between the degree of agency granted to the participants in Citizen Science projects and the degree of their representation in knowledge production.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“
Blockchain Technology – Autonomy for the IT-elite, new vulnerabilites for the rest?
No full textThe blockchain enticingly promises to make intermediaries of social interactions superfluous. At the moment, these have to be trusted, which produces dependencies, as the banking crisis painfully proves. Notaries and banks would become unnecessary through the blockchain. But the power of actors is not dissolved in the blockchain, rather it shifts towards new and most importantly illegitimate and uncontrolled centers of power. As interesting as the blockchain is from a technological standpoint, it is not a substitute for classical political action and the regulation of power. In his lecture, Rainer Rehak discusses the ideas behind blockchain and autonomy
How much autonomy is necessary?
Get PDFOne of the promises of the fourth industrial revolution is the self-organization of industrial process chains. But how much autonomy is possible and, most importantly, economically and organizationally necessary? The lecture will address interdisciplinary approaches to the understanding and calculation of autonomy and present a procedure for determining the necessary autonomy on the basis of the objectively measurable conditions of the organization. The outlook of the lecture will discuss the possibilities and limitations of the transfer of this approach to social systems
A Decentralized Provenance Network for Linked Open Data
Get PDFWith the growing availability of Linked Open Data (LOD) and the consequential generation of derived and aggregated data, the need for trustworthy, reproducible and accessible provenance informa-
tion has increased. Yet, no consistent mechanism has been established to manage provenance data of LOD on a global dataset-level. Decentralized networks and peer-to-peer mechanisms have made their revival in the last years with blockchain and similar distributed ledger technologies. We propose a novel approach to track and store provenance information for LOD on a dataset-level by sharing an immutable, common state between data providers. The basic architecture will not disrupt existing methodologies and standards for publishing LOD, but will be transparently integrated into existing ecosystems as an additional layer to foster broad acceptance. We will investigate the application of emerging blockchain technologies and established Linked Data specifications for building this decentralized anchor of truth. We are actively involved in the design and implementation of LOD and Open Data platforms and will evaluate our approach in real-world scenarios regarding feasibility, governance, scalability and usability.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) under grant no. 16DII111 ("Deutsches Internet-Institut"
How autonomous are so-called autonomous weapon systems – a conceptual critique
Get PDFFor more than ten years, unmanned weapon systems and especially killer drones have been in use. They operate semi-autonomously and especially the use of weapons is not yet decided independently by the systems. But the development of fully autonomous weapon systems is already in progress. This is highly alarming and dangerous, since this does not only cause a gigantic arms race and an increased risk of war, but also brings with it considerable technical and, connected to them, ethical problems. The term “autonomy“, for instance, is misleading in the context of weapon systems, as these are programmed systems that decide on life and death on the basis of their programs
Popularity cues in online media: Theoretical and methodological perspectives in political communication research
No full textPopularitätshinweise wie Likes und Shares signalisieren grundsätzlich positive Nutzerreaktionen. Im Kontext politischer Kommunikation sind sie in ihrer aggregierten Form entweder Indikator für Relevanzzuweisungen von oder die Zustimmung zu Online-Beiträgen. Popularitätshinweise können aber auch Faktoren sein, welche die Wahrnehmung, das Verhalten und die Einstellungen des Publikums beeinflussen. Dieser Beitrag thematisiert theoretische und methodologische Aspekte für beide Perspektiven. Im Rückgriff auf Konzepte wie wahrgenommene Relevanz, Einstellungskonsonanz und Persuasion, werden zuerst die Gründe für das Liken und Sharen diskutiert. Danach wird die Wirkung von Popularitätshinweisen hauptsächlich vor dem Hintergrund der Schweigespiraltheorie und heuristischer Informationsverarbeitung erörtert. Die Informationsverarbeitung wird als Schlüsselfaktor identifiziert um zu verstehen, wie das Liken und Sharen politischer Inhalte entsteht und welche politischen Effekte Popularitätshinweise auf Individualebene hervorrufen. Die methodologische Diskussion bezieht sich auf Fragen der Datenerhebung, sowie der Validität und der Durchführbarkeit von Studien zu Popularitätshinweisen.Popularity cues, such as likes and shares, point to mainly positive user reactions. On an aggregated level, they either indicate relevance assignments or endorsements of online items, particularly in the context of political communication. Second, popularity cues may affect the audience’s political perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes. This paper addresses theoretical and methodological issues for both perspectives. Drawing on concepts such as perceived relevance, attitudinal consonance, and persuasion, the antecedents of liking and sharing are discussed. Then, the effects of popularity cues are described, mainly against the backdrop of the spiral of silence theory and heuristic processing. The degree of elaboration is identified as a key factor for understanding why political content is liked or shared and how Likes and Shares render political effects on an individual level. Methodological issues concerning data collection as well as the validity and viability of studies on popularity cues are discussed
Digidem Digest - Issue 6 (September 2018)
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
Four Parameters for Measuring Democratic Deliberation: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges and How to Respond
Get PDFAlthough measuring democratic deliberation is necessary for a valid measurement of the performance of democracies, it poses serious theoretical and methodological challenges. The most serious problem in the context of research on democratic performance is the need for a theoretical and methodological approach for “upscaling” the measurement of deliberation from the micro and meso level to the macro level. The systemic approach offers a useful framework for this purpose. Building on this framework, this article offers a modular approach consisting of four parameters for conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation which can be adjusted to make the measurement of democratic deliberation compatible with the various general measurement approaches adopted by different scholars
Information Processing in Work Environment 4.0 and the Beneficial Impact of Intentional Forgetting on Change Management
Get PDFIndustrie 4.0 ist basierend auf fortschreitender Digitalisierung eine globale Entwicklung, die in allen Bereichen uns heute bekannter Arbeits- und Lebenswelten Einzug halten wird. Das Internet der Dinge beschleunigt Automatisierung bis hin zu autonomen cyberphysischen Systemen. Dieser Prozess wird begleitet von einer weiteren Zunahme von Daten. Gleichzeitig reduziert sich die Aktualität der Daten und damit die Dauer ihrer Relevanz. Die Herausforderungen im Umfeld von Industrie 4.0 zu meistern bedeutet für Menschen in Organisationen diese wachsenden Datenmengen und Anpassung an fortwährende Veränderung zu bewältigen. Intentionales Vergessen kann hier unterstützen. Intentionales Vergessen fokussiert das Vergessen irrelevanter Informationen und Verhaltensweisen zu Gunsten relevanter. In diesem Artikel stellen wir einen experimentellen Ansatz zur Erforschung von Prozessen des intentionalen Vergessens in Organisationen in einer Laborumgebung (Anwendungszentrum Industrie 4.0) vor. Im Fokus der Untersuchung steht dabei das Vergessen einer ungültig gewordenen Produktions-Routine und das Ausführen der neuen, jetzt gültigen. Wir beschreiben dabei zunächst das innovative experimentelle Design zur Untersuchung von Vergessensprozessen. In einer ersten Untersuchung mit N = 18 Personen, die insgesamt 3046 Handlungen zu t1 (1402) und t2 (1644) ausführen, zeigte sich, dass hoch gelernte (prozeduralisierte) Handlungen schwerer zu vergessen sind als ohnehin nicht prozeduralisierte. Es zeigt sich aber kein Unterschied hinsichtlich der Art der Handlungen und der Hinweisreize, durch die sie aufgerufen werden.Industry 4.0, based on increasingly progressive digitalization, is a global phenomenon that affects every part of our work. The Internet of Things (IoT) is pushing the process of automation, culminating in the total autonomy of cyber-physical systems. This process is accompanied by a massive amount of data, information, and new dimensions of flexibility. As the amount of available data increases, their specific timeliness decreases. Mastering Industry 4.0 requires humans to master the new dimensions of information and to adapt to relevant ongoing changes. Intentional forgetting can make a difference in this context, as it discards nonprevailing information and actions in favor of prevailing ones. Intentional forgetting is the basis of any adaptation to change, as it ensures that nonprevailing memory items are not retrieved while prevailing ones are retained. This study presents a novel experimental approach that was introduced in a learning factory (the Research and Application Center Industry 4.0) to investigate intentional forgetting as it applies to production routines. In the first experiment (N = 18), in which the participants collectively performed 3046 routine related actions (t1 = 1402, t2 = 1644), the results showed that highly proceduralized actions were more difficult to forget than actions that were less well-learned. Additionally, we found that the quality of cues that trigger the execution of routine actions had no effect on the extent of intentional forgettin