Making sense of our connected world
Information bubbles, are they a myth or a part of our daily digital lives?
The internet and social media in particular are often seen as important elements of modern democracy, not only because they make one-to-one and one-to-many communication easier, but because they can…
Of Cash and Cat-Content
At the end of June, when the web-video-scene met for their fifth, annual VidCon industry gathering in Anaheim, California, it was made clear that, in regards to contents, dilettante cat-content…
All the world’s a laboratory? On Facebook’s emotional contagion experiment and user rights
by Cornelius Puschmann and HIIG Fellow Engin Bozdag How significant is the impact of what we read on Facebook on what we post there, specifically on our emotions? And to what extent…
On IT-Infrastructure security as a complex, not necessarily complicated, task
Every society builds upon functioning infrastructures which are kept as free from bugs and manipulations as possible. That is all the more true when it comes to critical information infrastructures,…
Participating and making decisions online – Participation study 2014 of the HIIG
The rise of the Internet has been accompanied by the promise of an overall democratization like no other medium before (Dorer, 2008). Ever since, the discussion about increasing participation in…
Europe has voted…
Europe has voted – at least a minority of about 43 per cent of 400 million eligible voters did. Subtracting disappointed voters that wanted to state against established parties or…
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.
