HIIG SCIENCE BLOG

Scientific policy advice is also becoming increasingly important in Germany. What is important here? Rebecca Winkels talked to Christian Kobsda, associate researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, about this. At the “Impact School: Science Transfer in the 21st Century” he spoke with young researchers about the topic. Herr Kobsda, wieso…

Fake News affecting polls – a possibility feared for the Brazilian Presidential Elections this year. As Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux has claimed the election results could even be annulled. But how can courts measure the impact of fake news? Clara Iglesias Keller, visiting researcher at HIIG, deals with this question. According to Supreme Court Justice Luiz…

Big Brother is watching you. And not only that – new methods of evaluating and manipulating behavior are starting to threaten our freedom. In her new book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power”, Harvard economist Shoshana Zuboff takes a critical look at the new…

Do news aggregators impact traffic generation towards online news sites? Will platforms like Instagram and TripAdvisor automatically filter user content? Is an EU news publishers’ right really a good idea?  As the negotiations for the long-awaited European Directive on copyright in the digital single market are reaching their endpoint, the final chapter of the saga…

A team of investigative journalists has discovered so-called “Predatory publishing”. Since then media has quickly picked up the term “fake science”. Yet, the phenomenon is well-known to researchers and only a very small number of scientists are affected. Arndt Leininger, fellow at the Chair for Political Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin, comments why the scandalisation…

The Filter Bubble – that is one of the most discussed phenomena of the internet. It is suspected of restricting our perception of the Internet through filters. Everyone is talking about it and yet very few people know what the problem really is about. How does the Filter Bubble manipulate our perception? And can it…

Das The team of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) is looking for the following at the earliest opportunity a student employee with an IT background. The working hours of 10-20 hours per week will be determined by arrangement and according to your availability and will be paid at €12.50/hour. You…

Recently, reports on the various aspects of the “future of work” have been accumulating. Nevertheless, the visions about the digital society and the role of work in it seem to be rather vague. What’s more, the moment when machines become autonomous – which can already occur in the next 20 years –, we face an…

The Silicon Valley ideology is a morally destitute trap. But could its well-paid staff transform it? Building on her experience as a Google developer and a tech startup founder, guest author Wendy Liu makes the case for building worker power in Silicon Valley. A few weeks ago, WIRED Magazine published an article subtitled Silicon Valley Techies…

While social media platforms choose to identify themselves as neutral platforms, there is growing complexity around the ways to analyze their structure, operational dynamics as well as the regulatory frameworks which must accompany. Guest author Sana Ahmad researches the content moderation industry in India. The terminology ‘social media’ has come a long way. From its…