RESEARCH
The Center for Digital Participation is a competence platform for interdisciplinary research and transfer projects on digital participation.
Through basic and applied research, in national and international cooperation with partners from politics, administration, business, education, culture and research, the preconditions, forms and consequences of digital participation are examined and design recommendations developed.
The Center is characterized by a high level of expertise and extensive research experience, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives, and a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods.
THEMES
At a time when over 90 percent of the German-speaking population over the age of 14 and almost every young person under the age of 30 uses the Internet, the central social challenge of digitization is no longer to enable the use of digital media. Rather, the crucial question is: How do users succeed in using digital media in a constructive way and avoid destructive forms of use?
“Digital participation” describes the active use of digital media to consciously pursue personal and shared goals. It is the central prerequisite for the constructive use of digital media.
Only on the basis of digital participation will active and self-determined participation in the diverse opportunities of digitization be possible. Digital participation reduces the threat of a “digital divide” in society. Only through digital participation do individuals change from being driven to being shapers of digitization.
DIMENSIONS OF DIGITAL PARTICIPATION
The Center for Digital Participation is primarily concerned with three dimensions of digital participation:
- Preconditions
- Forms
- Consequences
All three are interconnected in that the right conditions enable constructive forms of participation – with positive consequences for the individual and society:
The prerequisites for digital participation exist at the individual, organizational, technical and societal levels.
These include individual knowledge, skills and attitudes, organizational instruments, processes and responsibilities, technical capacities, affordances and routines, and social resources, rules and norms.
Of particular interest here is the question: What conditions must be in place for constructive digital participation to succeed?
Digital participation takes place in all areas of life and affects the most diverse life situations, privately and professionally, more or less voluntarily, intensively or successfully.
Digital participation includes product recommendations and political criticism, blended and mobile learning, art projects and sharing, the linking and synchronization of producer-generated and user-generated content, selfies and digital games, the organization of self-help groups, and of course social engagement.
Of particular interest are the questions: What forms of digital participation exist and emerge? How do they influence each other? What qualities of participation can be distinguished? Who practices which form of participation – and who does not? As well as related to this: Who organizes and controls which forms of digital participation?
Digital participation can have both positive and negative consequences for the individual, social interaction and society. Different forms of participation are associated with different advantages and disadvantages.
The prerequisites, forms and consequences of digital participation must therefore be considered and analyzed together. Ultimately, the following questions are of particular interest: What advantages do users, groups, organizations and society derive from which forms of digital participation? What dangers can arise, what damage can be done, and how can they be avoided?
PROJECTS
Our research projects deal with the preconditions, forms and consequences of digital participation in diverse social contexts: politics, culture, education, entertainment, economy and health. The CDP team is characterized by proven expertise in communication and media sciences as well as media education.
Our research is based on the use of diverse methods from the humanities and social sciences, which are continuously adapted to the dynamic research object of digital participation and are thus further developed.
This project examines the role of epistemic authorities in the digital age. Epistemic authorities are persons, institutions, or technologies to whom people attribute advanced competence and reliability as knowledge sources.
In addition to traditional epistemic authorities such as science, journalism, and professional experts, new epistemic authorities have emerged in the digital public sphere, such as influencers, peer production networks, mobile apps and AI.
But how do the claims to epistemic authority of such new knowledge agents relate to objective knowledge criteria and to the subjective perception of audiences? And how can functional forms of epistemic authority be promoted in the digital age? The project examines these questions using case studies from various knowledge domains and forms of knowledge transfer.
Deepfakes are (audio-)visual recordings manipulated with the help of artificial intelligence that make it possible to depict a person in any situation and any conceivable environment and to use existing recordings of a person’s voice to make them say any sentence. The rapid advancement of this technology enables almost all internet users to create realistic but fictional video content. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the public to distinguish whether an audio or video recording is real or created by a machine. This development poses a challenge for public discourse, journalism, political and economic actors, as audiovisual content traditionally enjoys a particularly high level of credibility.
The joint project, funded by the Sächsische Aufbaubank (SAB), builds on a comprehensive literature analysis and, in a first step, focuses on the audience and their level of knowledge about deepfakes as well as their susceptibility to being deceived by manipulated (audio-)visual recordings. In a second step, the project aims to investigate opportunities and challenges for journalists in dealing with deepfakes. Finally, the focus on audiences and journalists will be expanded to include the perspectives of other actors from science, business and society. The aim is to enter into national and international collaborations and establish an interdisciplinary network for deepfake research at Leipzig University. In this context, the project work includes the organization of an interdisciplinary symposium and subject-specific workshops, the publication of an anthology and the conception of information material for affected stakeholder groups from the media, education, politics and business, as well as public relations work for the joint project.
In the futurehomestories project, participants work with researchers to design individual, alternative and innovative scenarios for the home of the future based on their personal life experiences, wishes and needs.
How can people use co-creation methods to tell stories about how they would like to live with technology in their homes in the future?
In order to answer this question, we would like to invite people from the general public to co-creation workshops so that they can actively contribute their ideas on how they want to live in the so-called smart home. Their active participation will enable us to better understand the home as a place of application for new technologies. A suitcase will be designed for the workshops based on existing methods and tools. This will be sent on trips to participants or used in workshops. The material contained in the suitcase gives participants the opportunity to express their personal ideas.
The resulting outcomes, for example in the form of stories, are documented and returned to the population in the form of a book of alternative futures (zine) and made accessible to a specialist audience.
The aim of futurehomestories is to make the tested co-creation methods available in the long term. To this end, the methods and tools contained in the case are compared and analyzed by the researchers and later prepared for context-independent use.
The aim of this project is to provide a business ethics perspective on how social, commercial and political actors at local and global levels can ensure accountability in algorithmic decision-making processes.
Taking into account the distributed nature of algorithms that can be generated, operated and applied in different countries simultaneously, this project will explore and develop accountability measures that can be adopted and tailored for local circumstances, such as the unique regulatory environment in Norway and the EU.
This project will combine a variety of methods from different academic disciplines and compare different contexts or sectors. In this way, the project aims to address problems associated with algorithmic opacity, such as lack of recourse to the user side, bias and discrimination. To this end, the project will conduct a multi-method and multi-stakeholder investigation to develop a comprehensive framework of the possibilities, responsibilities and outcomes of algorithmic decision-making.
Wie lassen sich Beteiligungsprozesse in ländlichen Räumen digital gestalten? Dieser Frage widmet sich das Forschungsvorhaben „Perspektiven und Einsatzmöglichkeiten digitaler Beteiligungsverfahren in der ländlichen Regionalentwicklung“ (DigiBeL).
Das Institut für Ländliche Strukturforschung (IfLS) und das Institut für Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft (IfKMW) in Leipzig untersuchen, wie digitale Verfahren bei der Beteiligung von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern bei der Umsetzung von regionalen Entwicklungsprozessen in ländlichen Räumen genutzt bzw. wirksamer gestaltet werden können.
Von 2020 bis 2023 wird herausgearbeitet, wie analoge Formate mit digitalen Formaten sinnvoll und effektiv kombiniert werden können. Neben einer Online-Befragung verschiedener Akteure in ländlichen Entwicklungsprozessen geben Fallstudien in verschiedenen ländlichen Regionen Deutschlands Aufschluss über die Einflussfaktoren auf Akzeptanz und Wirkung der Nutzung digitaler Verfahren. Gemeinsam mit den Akteuren werden Best-Practice-Beispiele identifiziert und Handlungsansätze entwickelt.
DigiBeL ist ein Verbundprojekt des Instituts für Ländliche Strukturforschung (IfLS) an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main und des Instituts für Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft (IfKMW) an der Universität Leipzig. Das Forschungsvorhaben wird vom Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft im Rahmen des Bundesprogramms Ländliche Entwicklung (BULE) gefördert.
Das Projekt untersucht, wie große Datenmengen und darauf basierende Prozesse medienkommunikativ gerahmt werden. Es rekonstruiert auf breiter Materialbasis in komparativer Perspektive das Framing von Big Data.
Dabei werden drei Ebenen miteinander verknüpft: Erstens werden die Frames in professionellen Kommunikationsformen mit denen in partizipativen Kommunikationsformen verglichen. Die Einflussbeziehungen zwischen diesen redaktionell-journalistisch produzierten bzw. nutzergenerierten Frames werden zweitens im Zeitverlauf nachvollzogen. Die Untersuchung dieser Prozesse erfolgt drittens im Ländervergleich von Deutschland, den USA und Südafrika.
Damit adressiert das Projekt drei wesentliche Leerstellen, um kulturelle Sinnstiftung im Kontext expansiver Datafizierungsvorgänge zu verstehen: Erstens erfasst es im Kommunikationsformvergleich das Repertoire an Deutungen von Big Data. Zweitens exploriert es im Zeitvergleich die dynamische Entfaltung des Diskurses über Big Data. Drittens diskutiert es im Ländervergleich die Varianz an Perspektiven auf Big Data. Das Projekt wird von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft unterstützt.
Das DIVSI-Forschungsprogramm „Beteiligung im Internet” untersucht Voraussetzungen für sowie Formen und Folgen von Beteiligung im Internet. Dabei stehen die Beteiligungskontexte Wirtschaft, Bildung, Kultur und Gesundheit im Mittelpunkt.
Neben einem systematischen Überblick über die internationale Forschung zum Thema beleuchten Online- und Offline-Fokusgruppen, was „Beteiligung im Internet” im Alltagsverständnis der Nutzer bedeutet, in welchen Bereichen sie stattfindet und welche Aktivitäten sie umfasst.
Eine bevölkerungsrepräsentative Befragung analysiert und quantifiziert schließlich Formen und Auswirkungen.
Weitere Informationen finden Sie hier.
Ziel des Projekts ist die sekundengenaue Beobachtung von Nutzungsvorgängen im Internet und deren individualisierte Verknüpfung mit online erhobenen Befragungsdaten. Dies ermöglicht eine qualitativ hochwertigere Analyse der digitalen Partizipation als reine Befragungen.
Hierzu wurde ein Forschungstool entwickelt und der Scientific Community als Open Source Software zur Verfügung gestellt. Im nächsten Entwicklungsschritt soll das anbieterseitig implementierte Forschungstool auf nutzerseitige Softwarelösungen erweitert werden.
Im Mittelpunkt des EU Horizon 2020 Forschungsprojekts stehen drei „P“: Participation, Privacy und Power.
Das Arbeitspaket „Participation“, das durch die Universität Leipzig geführt wird, befasst sich mit Voraussetzungen und Hürden einer Nutzung von Sharing-Plattformen.
Analysiert werden dabei sowohl Konsumenten wie auch Anbieter von Gütern und Dienstleistungen. Motive und Einstellungen werden ebenso beleuchtet, wie Plattformeigenschaften oder Auswirkungen einer Beteiligung.
Weitere Informationen finden Sie hier.
Das Projekt untersucht gemeinschaftlich-partizipative Produktionspraktiken zur Konvergenz von Producer-Generated (PGC) und User-Generated Content (UGC) in deutschen Social TV-Formaten. Dabei werden interdisziplinäre Diskussionen um Modelle sowie die unterschiedlichen Formen und Funktionen von Social TV aufgearbeitet.
Des Weiteren werden repräsentative Beispiele mit einem „Vier-Ebenen-Analysemodell“ (institutionelle Strategien, professionelle Praktiken, Inhalt und User-Beteiligung) untersucht, um erste Einschätzungen hinsichtlich der Auswirkungen vorzunehmen.
PUBLICATIONS
The team of the Center for Digital Participation has already realized numerous research projects in the field of digital participation. Here is an overview of the available studies and contributions.
We divide our publications by:
- Individual scientific papers
- Independent publications of studies and books
Current research contributions from the Center for Digital Participation are regularly presented here.
Security vs. privacy: trust factors in data handling and consequences for digital identity.
Security vs. privacy: trust factors in data handling and consequences for digital identity. Meckel, M., Hoffmann, C.P. & von Kaenel, A. (2010). Sicherheit vs. Privatheit: Vertrauensfaktoren im Umgang mit Daten und Konsequenzen für die digitale Identität. Hamburg: ISPRAT. In recent years, a growing discrepancy can be observed among Internet users with regard to the handling […]
Wikis. Taking stock of a research field and outlining an integrative analytical framework.
Wikis. Taking stock of a research field and outlining an integrative analytical framework. Pentzold, C., Seidenglanz, S., Fraas, C. & Ohler, P. (2007). Wikis. Bestandsaufnahme eines Forschungsfeldes und Skizzierung eines integrativen Analyserahmens. Medien und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 55(1), 61-79. Wikis as social software and a form of network-based collaborative work mark a decisive step in the recent […]
Synergy effects of entertainment and information programs about organ donation on issue involvement and altruistic responses
Synergy effects of entertainment and information programs about organ donation on issue involvement and altruistic responses Bartsch, A., & Angerer, L. (2021). Synergy effects of entertainment and information programs about organ donation on issue involvement and altruistic responses. Studies in Communication and Media, 10(1), 31-47. This study examines synergy effects of entertainment and information programs […]
Data Capitalism
Christoph Lutz, Christian P. Hoffmann & Giulia Ranzini
Data capitalism and the user: An exploration of privacy cynicism in Germany.
Synergy effects
Anne Bartsch & Lukas A. Angerer
Synergy effects of entertainment and information programs about organ donation on issue involvement and altruistic responses.
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