Making sense of our connected world
Why TV producers struggle with the Internet
More than 600 companies produce television programmes in Germany. The industry generated EUR 1.82 billion in 2011 (see Produzentenstudie 2012: 39). However, television production companies – unlike broadcasters themselves –…
Yochai Benkler – Freedom, Power, Practical Anarchism. And an Interview.
Yochai Benkler was the speaker of the WZB Berlin Colloquium “Rethinking Law in a Global Context: Private Ordering and Public Authority” on 11 June 2013. Professor Benkler discussed his recent paper…
Data sharing: Why it’s useful, why still nobody does it and where it could lead to
According to a study from Tenopir et al. (2011) among 1300 US scientist, 67 per cent of all respondents considered the missing access to research data as a major drawback…
MOOC Voting “How to build a startup”
It’s been about 18 months since a new learning format has inspired academic communities around the world: the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). After years of only mildly successful e-learning…
Impressions from the 1st International Conference on Internet Science (#icis2013)
The internet is not only being increasingly used by a broader mass of people but it is also increasingly being studied. There is a growing number of research institutions dedicated to studying the internet. The field of internet science is getting denser.
Of serial activists and sock puppets: The relevance of language, topics and politics on Twitter
by Cornelius Puschmann Does the Internet cause revolutions? Frequently that is being suggested, whether in the discourse surrounding the Arab Spring, Stuttgart 21, or the Occupy movement. The Internet, conventional…
How COVID-19 impacts digital technologies
The current lockdown is boosting online activity – everything is increasingly shifting to the digital sphere. In this dossier we ask if, how and why the Corona pandemic will affect key subjects of digital technologies. What does this mean for the regulation of content on digital platforms? How is Covid-19 activating the digital society? How does it transform our online culture? How safe are tracing apps? What lessons can be learned regarding cyber security? Busy times for our researchers!
How metaphors shape the digital society
Cloud, Big Data, Piracy, Virus are common terms in the debates about digital technologies. At the same time they are methaphors that originate from other fields than technology. What normative or political baggage do they therefore carry? How does this vocabulary shape the emerging digital society? In the series of articles on the How metaphors shape the digital society different authors analyse the assumptions and meanings of metaphors in the digital era.
