Everyday life – Digital Society Blog

Jörg Pohle | 21. September 2017

State hacking and IT security

It is a widely held belief that freedom and security are antagonists. This blog post addresses an issue where freedom and security are on the same side: IT security, especially…

Hannfried Leisterer | 18. September 2017

Telecommunications service providers get more authorities for more IT-security

In summer 2017, the German legislature has fully implemented the European Directive on Network and Information Security. In addition to transposing the European minimal standards, the German lawmaker adopted new…

Florian Lüdtke | 14. September 2017

About tested campaign promises and burst bubbles

Before the elections in Germany different voting advice applications appeared . Many of those online tools are purely informative, other tools like the Wahl-o-mat show the user’s political proximity to…

Cornelius Puschmann | 5. September 2017

How significant is algorithmic personalization in searches for political parties and candidates? Part II

Of the many things we do online, search is probably the most common. Beyond messaging, entertainment, shopping, and a myriad of other activities, utilizing search engines, such as Google, to…

Jonas Kaiser | 29. August 2017

Harmful online speech and the role of collective identities

Harmful speech or hate speech is a tragic part of online communication. By examining the how users talk to each other about climate change in online comment sections of German…

Tarleton Gillespie | 24. August 2017

The Platform Metaphor, Revisited

The most successful internet businesses are based on the idea of offering a platform. Author Tarleton Gillespie discusses the hidden meaning of this popular and widely accepted metaphor and reveals…

Urs Kind | 21. August 2017

Social media usage as a marketing tool for video content

This article analyses how different film and video formats like movies (cinema), series (TV or VoD) and webseries make use of social media platforms as communication tools (facebook, twitter and…

Noam Tirosh | 13. June 2017

Who benefits from the so-called New Media Revolution?

The new media revolution is a common metaphor that is often used to describe the contemporary communications ecosystem. This essay investigates how it influences the way individuals, groups and policy…

Max Hänska | 6. June 2017

How the GE2017 campaign is shaping up on Twitter

The 2017 General Election is now only a matter of days away, with much campaign activity taking place online, and in particular on Twitter. Here, Stefan Bauchowitz and Max Hänska…