What is ‘correct’ language in digital society? From Gutenberg to Alexa Galaxy
How do notions of ‘right’ language change in the context of digital communication? Britta Schneider examines changing notions and practices of ‘correct’ language, with an ambivalent role for digital communication…
Digital decade: The internet’s future is at stake
To ensure the Internet survives the next decade, we need to start asking the right questions, argue Matthias C. Kettemann, Wolfgang Kleinwächter and Max Senges. It’s not only personal liberties…
TikTok, a kaleidoscope of visuals, data and legal questions
Are social media platforms empowering people to connect beyond borders or are they the custodians of digital communication spaces where users have to comply with strict content moderation rules? The…
Algorithmic decisions and human rights
Who is responsible if an autonomous vehicle is involved in an accident? What are the consequences of automated profiling of the unemployed? How intelligent is our use of artificial intelligence, and what visions and strategies do we need for the future? Innovations in the field of artificial intelligence are impacting nearly every area of our everyday life. However, algorithmic decision-making leads to complex human rights implications....
Digital innovation and entrepreneurship
Increasingly, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are investing in digital technologies to respond to the rapid changes that are now affecting almost all sectors of life and work. Many SMEs take this step either to realign their business model, to make their processes more efficient or simply because they are forced to do so by structural change and altering customer needs. But what concrete activities and strategies do SMEs pursue...
Governing AI: Political players between vision and regulation
Not only tech giants in Silicon Valley influence the development of artificial intelligence (AI): supranational political institutions, states and parties are also active leaders and regulators. They set legal standards, formulate strategies for the future, explore potentials and dangers, promote and sanction or even adopt controversial positions. How do political actors position themselves in the AI debate between economic interest,...
Exploring the digital society
To understand current social and technological change, we need explanations that help shape our future. Within the framework of the lecture series “Making Sense of the Digital Society“, visionary experts share their perspective on the digital society of our time. They address fundamental questions: What could a European perspective on the current transformation process look like? What is the meaning of power and how is it...
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AI in SMEs – Status quo and challenges
“AI is a basic technology that enables a wide range of new capabilities for machines that challenge entire market hypotheses,” says Alexander Waldmann in the interview with Miriam Wolf. This…
Online content regulation in Brazil faces risk of setback
In Brazil, the operative intermediary liability system risks being invalidated, as the country’s Supreme Court should rule on its constitutionality this week. Associated HIIG researcher Clara Iglesias Keller argues that,…
African innovation hubs coming of age
How do fledgling digital innovation communities evolve in the Global South? Nicolas Friederici shares his observations from the 2019 AfriLabs Annual Gathering, and discusses how early communities have grown and…
Open access futures: time to push for scholar-led publishing
What is the cost of quality in open access (OA) publishing? And who should profit from open access? At this point in the OA-transformation, the position of scholar-led journals is…
Critical Voices, Visions and Vectors for Internet Governance
The Internet has changed our world. But has it also irritated hierarchical power structures and given a meaningful voice to all? Are offline differentials in terms of access to individual…
Busted: The internet democratises innovation
Online, it is a common belief that the internet due to its easily accessible information has an enabling effect on innovation – making anybody a potential innovator. Alina Wernick takes…
A Guide to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2019
In November, the United Nations Global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) comes to Germany for the first time. Following the motto “One World. One Net. One Vision”, researchers and politicians from…
Busted: AI will fix it
There is a strong belief on the internet that AI will solve basically all of future society’s problems, if we just give it enough time. Christian Katzenbach took a close…
Busted! 50 internet myths and why they are wrong
Yes, laws matter online. No, criminals don’t all go free. And no, privacy isn’t dead – yet. As the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2019 approaches, Matthias C. Kettemann (HIIG and…
Platform business models for German SMEs: Interview with Svenja Falk
What should SMEs consider, when they try to build their own platform? “Key focus should be on the ability to create value through joining the platform economy”, says Svenja Falk,…
Competing against digital giants – platform economy in Germany and Europe
Sina Beckstein analyses the panel discussion “Competing with digital giants”, which took place as a part of the Internet Governance Forum Germany (IGF-D). Subject of the discussion was the competitiveness…
“Robot judges” without training?
Discussing the implementation of automated decision making systems as savior of overburdened legal decision makers is en vogue. But if employed instead of human decision makers and with rising complexity…
There isn’t enough empirical data on the impact of AI
Many articles in peer-reviewed journals that investigate the application of artificial intelligence to knowledge work refer to data and insights from blogs, newspapers, or data collected by consulting firms. This…
The price of cheap labour
Digital global markets connect supply and demand in a historically unique way. At the same time, the distribution of customers and employees across nations and continents dramatically changed. The age…
Autonomous weapons – reality or imagination?
How autonomous are autonomous weapons? Do they exist in reality? And in what ways do fictional characters like the Terminator shape how we think about this technology? These questions were…
Endangered privacy in the digital society
In his new book, Armin Nassehi makes the attempt to substatiate digital technology in the structure of modern society itself. He develops the thesis that certain social regularities, structures and…
Don’t let the numbers get to you
Her widely received essay “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy” at the turn of the millennium made Tiziana Terranova one of the most influential voices on the digital…
How an online order fights fragmentation
The internet will not break apart. While centrifugal forces contribute to the emergence of normative froth, frictions and fractures, technical invariants of the internet exercise defragmentation forces. But that’s not…
Quality control for predictive analytics
More and more decisions are reached with the help of algorithms. Some kind of regulation clearly is necessary. In this article, associated HIIG researcher Gert G. Wagner and Johannes Gerberding…
Robot judge: Verdict in the name of the algorithm?
Smaller legal disputes in Estonia are to be decided by Artificial Intelligence. In the USA, algorithms are already making decisions about penalties and bail amounts. In Germany, too, there is…
How do digital platforms make their money?
How do digital platforms capture value from the transactions they enable between different actors? An analysis of 51 platform startups and a derivation of recurring value capture patterns, resulted in…
