Problem-oriented research on Internet & Society
The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) aims to broaden the theoretical and empirical foundation of internet and society research in order to contribute to a better understanding of digital society.
Throughout the process of digitalisation, societies are undergoing changes. Our conceptual frame of reference for identifying and assessing these societal changes is the relationship between innovation and governance. Tensions and synergies emerging from this relationship can be found across all societal fields and organisations including the state, corporations and markets, from the local to the global level.
To analyse the relationship between innovation and governance, HIIG has developed three long-term research programmes. They form the framework for the research agenda at HIIG. Further research groups, laboratories and projects strengthen this programme-oriented research. Individual research projects are usually part of a programme, group or laboratory. Different research results are presented and discussed as part of science communication projects.
Analysing the relationship between innovation and governance, HIIG has developed three long-term research programmes. They are driven by broad research questions reflecting the institute’s disciplines and provide the framework for the research activities at HIIG:
Larger research groups develop their own thematic focus to strengthen disciplinary competences in individual areas. With their research, they contribute to the agenda of the three research programmes:
Science communications projects and inter- and transdisciplinary research laboratories function as an interface and translator between academia on one side and industry and civil society on the other:
Individual research projects complement and strengthen our research. They also serve to conduct short-term studies and provide reliable results on current topics.
- All
- AI
- Entrepreneurship & innovation
- Media & data
- Politics & law
- Science & education
- Science communication
- Society & culture
A media theory of the humanoid robot – Artificial intelligence in Japanese and European interpretations
It is exactly because AI concepts and discourses are in no way universal but depend on the contexts of their formation, that cross-cultural perspectives and comparisons are of utmost importance. This is why the project particularly looks at humanoid robots in Japan with the objective of uncovering the multiple realities of artificial intelligence – between science and fiction, East Asian and European concepts.
ACTiSS: Action for computational social science
ACTiSS is an educational project aimed at fostering the development of computational thinking among social science students and young professionals. Together with the Universities of Warsaw and Groeningen, the HIIG is developing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that combines academic expertise and real-world examples from politics, economics, sociology and other areas in which computational models are used to analyse societal processes. The project aims to promote students’ computational skills and reduce barriers to computational thinking. All digital training and teaching materials will be freely available to learners and teachers.
Artificial Intelligence & Knowledge Work – Implications, Opportunities And Risks
The research project focuses on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in the intraorganizational workplace of knowledge workers. The project investigates with which intentions and strategies AI applications are used in the workplace, which changes are perceived by the participants and how employees, companies and co-determination actors react to them. The work is methodically guided by an empirically qualitative social science research design with a mixed-method approach.
Between Autonomy and Surveillance – Employee-oriented use of people analytics in onsite and remote work
We explore how organizations and users employ people analytics applications. These applications analyze a variety of data such as usage data from digital information systems and combine those with traditional data from human resources like fluctuation rates.
Case Study: Innovation and Imitation in the Games Sector
The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society is currently launching an 18-month study into the tension between innovation and imitation in the Digital Games Industry.
In our project “Competing and complementing – The relation of co-determination and new participatory platforms within companies” we do research on workers participation on digital platforms by examining new forms and processes of employee participation online. In Germany co-determination defines a set of employee rights including the possibility of actively participating in the shaping of their working environment. In the context of digitization, numerous companies are introducing digital platforms that are intended to strengthen the participation of employees by using e.g. Enterprise Social Software.
Cybersecurity
The project explores the important, both mutually beneficial and conflict-prone relationship between cybersecurity and privacy. State-of-the-art cybersecurity protection often relies on the collection and analysis of large and ever increasing amounts of data. In order to detect anomalies, measures like deep packet inspection are used. At the same time, new regulation demands sharing that data with other companies and with governments in order to prevent cyber threats.
Data & Society Interface
The Data & Society Interface therefore aims to think beyond and go beyond the widespread calling for “open data”. How can we make data from private and public organizations usable for scientific purposes and for the general good of the society, and still take legal, ethical, economic or organizational challenges and legitimate interest of all stakeholders into account? How can we identify, develop and test solutions – both technical and non-technical, as proof of concept, demonstrator or prototypical implementation – which facilitate interfaces on the organizational level?
Data Cooperation Platforms for SMEs
The project Data Cooperation Platforms for SMEs (DaPla Mittelstand) is exploring how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in data-rich markets can better participate in the increasing platformization of value chains. The project examines the extent to which SMEs are able to establish and use digital platforms. It discusses conditions for successful cooperative governance models for SMEs in data-intensive markets. In particular, collaborations among SMEs or alliances between SMEs and and large companies will be assessed.
Data Protection as a Service
In this research project we are developing, together with several research partners, solutions that help website owners to overcome their knowledge uncertainties. By specifying GDPR provisions regarding the operation of websites, we create certification criteria that determine how hosting providers can help website owners to operate their website or blog in accordance with the GDPR. These hosting providers can, on the other hand, signal this help to their (potential) customers as a product feature and thus gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.
Defining concepts of the digital society
This publication project seeks to substantiate the conceptual ambition of the research programme The Evolving Digital Society by curating and publishing a set of reference articles on key notions and concepts. Leading academics will write short articles that portray and discuss the state of research with an interdisciplinary mindset. As a result, these reference papers will provide guidance for research, teaching and stakeholders in policy, business and civil society.
Digital Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship
In the “Digital Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship” research project, we investigate entrepreneurial organisations that primarily focus on society – often called social enterprises. We look at the role of digital technologies in solving social and environmental challenges and in creating societal value. We also examine how organisations with societal aims can succeed in shaping a digital, inclusive and sustainable transformation.
Digitalisation and Climate
The project Digitalisation and Climate examines the economic, ecological & social dimensions of a sustainable digital economy.
Digitalisation and Entrepreneurship
The Digitalisation and Entrepreneurship project explores sustainable digital entrepreneurship, the gig economy and the future of work.
DREAM (Digital Research Mining)
As part of the DREAM project, a mobile application is being developed that simplifies the search for scientific open access publications and suggests suitable new content. Our target audience are mostly researchers and students who are looking for scientific content, are producing such content themselves or who intend to network more closely in their working environment. Easy-to-understand teasers will allow interested readers such as journalists, representatives of NGOs, politicians and entrepreneurs to inform themselves on certain scientific topics, and the state of research.
Empirical Copyright Research
Copyright is one of the most contested fields of Internet regulation. Strong copyright protection is routinely assumed to be a key factor in the creative economies
Global Privacy Governance
In the age of the Internet, in the wake of new challenges from increased network connection, new data generation and collection, new analytical techniques and conflicting cultural values, privacy debates have emerged as a prominent focal point for many concerns.
IMPaQT – Indicators, Measurement and Performance of Quality Assurance: Third-Mission-Activities in the Social Sciences
The research project “IMPaQT” is about making knowledge transfer from research to society measurable through quality criteria and indicators. We plan to analyze communication activities between academia and society in such areas politics, business, civic society, which constitute the “Third mission” of research institutions. We are especially interested in those activities on the science and society interface that have so far been little studied or documented and therefore do not play a role in the evaluation of research.
Jung. Digital. Engagiert.
The project Jung. Digital. Engagiert. ties in thematically with the Third Engagement Report, in which civic engagement is examined with a focus on the opportunities and challenges for youth and young adult engagement in the digital age. It was published in summer 2020.
Open!NEXT – Open and community-based innovation processes
By sharing ideas and knowledge openly on digital platforms, a network of 19 partners in EU-countries, called OPEN!NEXT, will investigate new collaborations between company and consumer to foster the idea of open source and open innovation in the non-software area. The team at HIIG is headed by Prof. Dr. Hendrik Send and Dr. Stephan Bohn. We especially investigate how companies implement open source ideas in their product development and daily business processes.
Organizational Adaptivity in the German Higher Education Context (OrA)
In this project, we investigate the digitalization of higher education, with a focus placed on exploring the implementation of teaching and learning innovations. Specifically, we track how institutions and their stakeholders adapt to these innovations, implement new practices, and ensure their sustainability.
Platform Alternatives
The project team will derive Corporate Governance Principles for digital platforms that seek to distribute collectively created value more fairly. The project is implemented jointly by HIIG and the Oxford Internet Institute (OII).
Platform governance
Platforms have installed themselves as key intermediaries in contemporary societies. They re-organise communication and politics, mobility and travel, work and everyday life. Yet, with this change controversies arise. How do social media companies moderate the content on their sites?
Platform Governance and Copyright (H2020)
This project tackles these issues from two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, it investigates the governance structures that social media platforms have devised over time to create a profitable balance between freedom of and control over speech. How do the obscure algorithmic systems that identify and take down contents function? What private rules are used to regulate both these systems and users’ actions?
Public Interest AI
The “Public Interest AI” research group is therefore developing an operationalisable analysis procedure that allows defining and assessing public interest AI on three levels: on an argumentative level, on the level of the technical implementation of AI, and on the level of the usability of AI in the application context.
Publication: Internet Policy Review
The Internet Policy Review is an open access, fast track and peer-reviewed journal on Internet regulation.
Ranking Digital Rights
Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) works to promote freedom of expression and privacy on the internet by creating global standards and incentives for companies to respect and protect users’ rights. The project does this by ranking the world’s most powerful internet, mobile, and telecommunications companies on relevant commitments and policies, based on international human rights standards.
Scholar-led Plus
The project aims to improve the publication situation of scholar-led, non-APC open access gold journals through a consortial support structure. The thematic focus is on small, trans- and interdisciplinary subjects and communities, where already established funding options are not effective and the responsibilities are often unclear.
The project employs diverse sets of methods, including historical, ethnographic, and computational methods and the Media Lab’s cartographie de controverses, to investigate the discourse and developments around AI’s “deep learning revolution” over the ten formative years from 2012 to 2021 in the four partner countries and across three key domains. The media analysis investigates AI debates in major news outlets, niche websites and social media conversation.
Task Force: European Platform Economy
The “Task Force European Platform Economy” is a group of HIIG researchers who study the implications of global platformisation for European actors and institutions. The Task Force works in an explorative and flexible manner across several projects and disciplines, and collaborates with external researchers, policymakers and business experts. The group’s aim is to conduct and foster research on digital platforms, establish a network of platform experts and promote knowledge transfer and exchange.
The Digital Administrative State
Current discussions on the Internet’s impact on public administration and on public institutions in general have centred around the notion of e-government. Our research contributes to this debate by investigating the relationship between the Internet and public institutions as well as their modes of action (public governance).
The discursive and political construction of AI
This project empirically investigates the discursive and political construction of AI in contemporary societies. We have started with small-scale preliminary studies on the media discourse in Germany as well as on select national AI strategies.
The Ethics of Digitalisation – From Principles to Practices
The international research project “Ethics of Digitalisation – From Principles to Practices” aims to develop groundbreaking answers to challenges in the area of conflict between ethics and digitalisation. Innovative scientific formats, research sprints and clinics, form the core of the project; they enable interdisciplinary scientific work on application-, and practice-oriented questions and achieve outputs of high societal relevance and impact.
The Public International Law of the Internet
The rapid development of the Internet and the increasing digitalisation of everyday life is raising new legal questions across the world: Which (state?) law is applicable to which life circumstance? What does a nation’s (digital?) sovereignty mean in the era of a potentially limitless cyberspace?
- All
- AI
- Entrepreneurship & innovation
- Media & data
- Politics & law
- Science & education
- Science communication
- Society & culture
»dwerft«
In March 2014, a three-year research project on new technologies for digital moving images will start in Babelsberg: the »dwerft«.
Big Data & Nudging – Regulation by Big Data and Behavioural Sciences
The research project aims at bringing together the fragmented discussions on big data-driven behavioural regulation, relating the results of these debates to each other and thus identifying both new research questions and needs for political action. To this end, a conceptual framework is developed first which is used to classify and characterise the instruments, both in existence and under discussion, of big data-driven behavioural regulation.
Creative uses and cross – border copyright regulation
The Internet and digitisation simplify access to copyright protected works, and facilitate their distribution and use. However, these developments also pose fundamental questions of how to reconcile the often-opposing interests and ideas for regulation in this domain.
Sharing and reusing digital data can enhance innovation and increase economic and social prosperity. However, economic…
The sharing and re-use of digital data can foster innovation and increase economic and social welfare. However, economic and legal obstacles as well as strategic uncertainties often seem to prevent organizations from sharing the data they control. The “Data Governance” project therefore aimed at elaborating on data governance models that help actors to share and re-use their data
We developed a prototype for e-voting and e-polling based upon digital identity and Random-Sample Voting. The project was one of the winning projects by the Mercator Foundation’s Advocate Europe ideas competition 2018.
Demystifying AI in entrepreneurship
The AI production process is not a magic blackbox, but rather an entrepreneurial process designed and carried out by actors, such as entrepreneurs, with a certain motivation. In this context, HIIG researchers are examining the entrepreneurial process of AI production in Germany as part of the pilot project “Demystifying AI in entrepreneurship – What’s behind German AI production?”.
Digital Civil Disobedience
The political phenomenon of civil disobedience has undergone a remarkable change in recent times, with the expression electronic civil disobedience coming into being in the mid-1990s.
Digital Electoral Compass 2021
The Digital Electoral Compass is intended to create transparency, show the parties’ positions on digital policy issues and provide an overview of their individual plans. The election programmes are divided into six thematic categories: Work & Economy, Infrastructure, Social Affairs & Health, Media & Internet, Education & Research, Administration & Openness and Security.
The respective projects do not only take place in different functional areas of the companies, but are also related to trending topics like Smart City, New Work, or Augmented Reality. Frequently, these projects are implemented in close collaboration with startups. The goal of the study is to present several examples and success stories from different companies and regions of Germany and to derive recommendations for action.
Entrepreneurship Research Lab
Our Innovation and Entrepreneurship team is a transdisciplinary group of researchers at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet & Society (HIIG).
Freedom of Expression in the Quasi-Public Sphere
The emerging publics on the Internet heavily rely on the infrastructure and platforms provided by private entities such as Facebook, Twitter, the Apple App Store, or Google. Previous research, predominantly in the form of case studies, has revealed that online platforms not only facilitate but also limit private speech in certain contexts.
Gemeinsam Digital
_Gemeinsam digital, the Mittelstand 4.0-Kompetenzzentrum Berlin, is a central contact point for all companies in Berlin and nationwide that have questions about digitization. Our work is practical, user-oriented and cross-industry. The HIIG is in charge of the topics AI, digital business models, digital further education, and collaboration and offers competent consulting and scientific expertise in various areas.
Goodcoin – Robust Privacy for Loyalty Programmes and Payment Systems
The processing of customer data plays an important role both in traditional business and e-commerce.
How to collaborate with startups?
It is obvious that the tremendous differences in terms of culture, available resources and agility between corporates and startups present challenges for a successful cooperation. Thus, the failure and discontinuation rates of corporate startup collaboration remain high. To date, reliable success factors for these common development projects have rarely been identified. For this reason, the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and Spielfeld Digital Hub, a common initiative of Visa Europe and Roland Berger, have initiated a research project. The one year study “How to collaborate with startups?” will consist of two parts.
Index of Internet-based Innovation
The Index of Internet-based Innovations illustrates how sectors, regions and companies utilise the Internet when developing new products and services. The objective is to determine parameters identifying the innovative capacity of the Internet for organisational contexts. In connection with the use of information and communication technologies, some factors can serve as a basis for Internet-enabled innovation by applying their empirical indicators.
Innovation and Imitation in the Games Sector
This 2-year study investigated the tension between innovation and imitation in the Digital Games Industry. In this project, we understand imitation as a basic social practice that informs our learning and making. This seems to be particular true for the gaming industry: Entire game genres (think platform sidescroller games or first person shooters) have emerged by re-making and extending on great games.
Innovative Open Access in small sciences (InnOAccess)
The project builds on prior work by the Internet Policy Review, published by HIIG since 2012. This journal publishes independent of any publishers, does not charge and processing fees, and has made a name for itself through an accelerated and open peer review process. Internet Policy Review follows legal changes as well the development of internet standards and norms that have long-term impacts on European societies. The journal constitutes a resource for academics, civil society, entrepreneurs, media, and politicians in equal measure.
Internet of Things: Entrepreneurship & eGovernment
Our research project is divided into two areas. First, we examine the issue from the perspective of technology adaptation and commercialisation – both by startups and established companies. Secondly, we examine how governments can use these applications themselves and what role regulation plays in the internet of things.
KORSE @ HIIG – the Internet and civil security in Europe
The emergence of cyberspace has challenged the law of civil security in Europe. Today, nearly all aspects of life have a digital dimension and therefore, we face new digital threats.
Learn. Match. Partner.
The aim of the first phase is to develop an understanding of the functioning and basic principles of the partner. Interfaces thus found enable an initial, pragmatic short- and medium-term cooperation. These experiences create a trusting basis for medium to long-term, intensive cooperation and joint value creation (partner phase).
Networks of Outrage
In the past decade, Europe has witnessed the birth of many movements at the right end of the political spectrum.
Opening Science
It seems as though the digitalisation of research is accompanied by a revision of established research practices and an opening of the research process. In the lead project Open Science we examine the mentioned changes.
Participating through the Outernet
Due to technological progress and a price decline in display technologies, it is believed that almost any surface in urban spaces could become digital. In the long run, people might live ‘inside’ the Internet, surrounded by interactive and digital surfaces.
Participation in German Law
In the context of a comprehensive project concerning online participation in cooperation with the Hans-Bredow-Institute, the sub-project „e-petitions“ focuses on the e-petitions platform of the German parliament, the Bundestag.
Pelagios Network: Linking the places of your past
The project investigates new methodologies for using Linked Data to connect historical sources through common references using a variety of digital content including text, images, media, 3D objects, or online databases. This approach minimizes the entry threshold for data users by placing no requirements concerning the adherence to specific metadata schemas, data models, vocabularies or technical implementations with regard to the data.
Privacy by design in smart cities
How to build smart cities in a privacy and security-friendly way, when more and more movements and human…
The Futures of Telemedicine: Knowledge, Policy, Regulation
Digital health cards, electronic health records, medical telematics infrastructure – these are the terms dominating the public and political debates on the digitalization of the health care system in Germany. At EU level, electronic health services (eHealth) are also seen as a great opportunity.
The Third Engagement Report
The Third Engagement Report is a report on civic engagement that focuses on “The Future of Civil Society: Young Engagement in the Digital Age.”
User innovation in smart energy technologies
Interconnected, intelligent energy systems are a highly discussed issue. Such systems are used by customers to control and measure their energy us-age.
Wahlkompass Digitales
Click here for Wahlkompass 2021 Digital policy will be a focal point of the German federal elections…