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Untangling the Future of Diamond Access: Discussing Quality Standards for the Re-communalization of Scholarly Publishing
This paper examines the future of Diamond Open Access as a non-commercial, community-driven model for scholarly publishing that challenges the growing marketization of research dissemination. Drawing on recent initiatives, such as DIAMAS, Craft-OA, the Global Diamond Summits, and ALMASI, it analyzes the existing definitions and standards for Diamond journals, highlighting efforts in Europe and Latin America to establish common criteria for quality, sustainability, and visibility. It emphasizes the need to move beyond universal rankings and impact factors toward context-sensitive federated indexing systems, such as Latindex, SciELO, Redalyc, Biblat, AJOL, or DOAJ, that reflect the diversity of academic communities. The paper argues for a re-communalization of scholarly publishing through institutional support, reliable indexation, and the recognition of multi-indexed journals as legitimate indicators of quality. Ultimately, it proposes reclaiming academic control from corporate infrastructures by reinforcing autonomy, multilingualism, and bibliodiversity in research evaluation and publication practices.
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Reclaiming (Parts of) Scholarly Communication: Resilient Publishing as a Community-Driven Effort
Community-driven open-access journals foster the idea of a biblio-diverse publishing ecosystem and challenge the prevalent commercialization of academic publishing. However, despite their importance, their existence is at risk. With little to no budget, they mostly operate on the unpaid labor of their editorial teams and the free support provided by public infrastructures. The first part of this article describes the model, key functions, and governance principles of community-driven open-access journals within the business of global academic publishing. In promoting fair, resilient, and gratis open access, they contribute to the evolution of an inclusive and biblio-diverse intellectual landscape. The article then concerns itself with the challenges that community-driven publishing faces within the system of academia and academic publishing. Emphasizing the need for more funding, engagement strategies, and wider responsibility, I close with some practical suggestions for immediate aid.
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Is Authenticity an Effective Antidote to Misinformation?
The growing impact of false and misleading information is a cause for concern. Some have suggested an authenticity crisis as the cause, namely, the fact that we can no longer be certain of the source and integrity of a particular piece of information. To fix this, the ubiquitous use of digital signatures has been proposed to (re)establish the authenticity of information. We argue that this is unlikely to curb the impact of misinformation for several reasons. First, little evidence suggests that more authenticity could theoretically solve part of the misinformation problem. In fact, the implied use of signatures as a proxy for veracity is fundamentally problematic. Second, there are significant barriers to the practical implementation of ubiquitous signing. Lastly, we point out potential negative side effects. We conclude that authenticity is not effective in countering misinformation.
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Editorial: Special Issue: Fostering Societal Values in Digital Times – Peace, Care, and Tech Regulation
Joseph Weizenbaum would have been 100 years old on January 8, 2023. This anniversary was a welcome occasion to remember the life, work, and impact of the great computer scientist and public intellectual at the Weizenbaum Institute. This special issue compiles a series of articles directly or indirectly related to his work. Contributions center on Weizenbaum as an individual and his public role as a progressive intellectual, encompassing contemporary viewpoints on ethics in digital technology.
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Communicative Feedback Loops in the Digital Society
Contemporary communication is often characterized using metaphors as “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles.” Despite the popularity of these terms, however, growing concerns about vague definitions are complemented by empirical evidence that contests their widespread existence. Nonetheless, today’s media environment offers ample opportunities for human and/or algorithmic selection processes with undesirable outcomes. To reconcile these two observations, I propose taking a feedback-loop perspective. Such a perspective explains how processes can reinforce themselves without producing catastrophic consequences. This can solve the paradox that while extrapolating from typical filter bubble and/or echo chamber models results in full radicalization within a short period, this outcome has not, despite the long-standing presence of the relevant technologies, become omnipresent. After mapping different types of feedback loops in communication research, I review various empirical approaches, discuss how they can improve research on feedback-loop phenomena, and consider how this can enable us to build better theories of communication in the digital society.
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Editorial: Volume 3, Issue 1
The five papers in this issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society examine processes of digitalization from a perspective that encompasses political economy, political science, psychology, and communication science. In turn, the contributors explore the relationship between digitalization and capitalism, the role of civic tech initiatives, the regulation of political micro-targeting on social media, the use of fictive accounts of historical figures on social media, and concepts for the participatory development of research agendas.
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The Authenticity Challenge
This essay examines how generative AI is reshaping journalism through both efficiency gains and deep epistemic risks, a dynamic we refer to as the “authenticity challenge.” Generative AI now supports news gathering and production through data analysis, trend detection, idea generation, transcription, translation, summarization, and even full story creation. While these tools facilitate faster, more scalable, and more flexible output, they also produce synthetic text, images, audio, and video that are increasingly indistinguishable from human-created material. This undermines audiences’ ability to distinguish the artificial from the authentic and threatens trust in both individual stories and news institutions. We discuss responses to this dilemma, including offering AI assisted verification, provenance (such as cryptographic content credentials), and greater transparency about AI use and human oversight. Audience research suggests, however, that perceived authenticity also depends on visible human involvement and journalistic character. Against a backdrop of economic strain and declining trust, we argue that journalism must redefine authenticity as a process to preserve credibility in an AI saturated information ecosystem.
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Peace Journalism in the Digital Age: Exploring Opportunities, Impact, and Challenges
The advent of modern means of communication opens up a wide range of possibilities for individual users, organizations, and governments to connect. This paper argues that the concept of peace journalism can leverage the potential of digital developments to maintain relevance in current times. Five areas of peace journalism’s possible synchronization with media digitalization are deduced and elaborated from a pragmatic perspective to facilitate conceptual advancement: (1) digital distribution, (2) utility of the potential of two-way communication, (3) exploration of new forms of digital storytelling, (4) curation of various digital sources of conflict actors and fact-checking, and (5) incorporation of virtual training and digital skills into journalism curricula. By addressing these aspects of media digitalization, peace journalism outlets can receive acclaim within modern journalistic circles while also attracting wider audience support.
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Disconnecting in a Digital World: A Practice-based Approach
How individuals use or refrain from using mobile digital technology in their habitual daily practices has significant implications for their well-being. Closely related to digital well-being is the sociotechnical phenomenon of voluntary digital disconnection; a deliberate form of non-use that varies in frequency and duration. While this concept foregrounds intention, disconnection may also arise incidentally in everyday life. This study explores the phenomenon through an information systems lens and draws on sociological practice theory to examine how digital disconnection is enacted in practice, based on qualitative data from 12 interviews and 5 observations. The findings suggest that digital disconnection unfolds continuously over time, both with and without deliberate intention. Therefore, we propose digital disconnecting as a broader term that encompasses not only deliberate non-use, but also emergent, unintended forms of disconnecting. Our analysis further demonstrates that digital disconnecting unfolds along a continuum of dynamic and interrelated dimensions: temporal, mental-emotional, technical, and spatial. Importantly, regarding the spatial context, we found that places – and the placing of a digital device within them – matter for enacting digital disconnecting. Our findings further the existing understanding of disconnection strategies by highlighting that individuals may strategically use places and device placement to enact disconnecting.
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Editorial: Volume 4, Issue 3
This issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society addresses the increasing prevalence of algorithmic management in both business and public administration. This subject is the focus of vigorous debate across sociology, law, political science, and economics. The articles featured in this issue not only analyse the historical foundations of this practice but also examine its manifestations in various contexts, extending beyond the gig economy to encompass other industries.
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The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society: Editorial
The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society is an open access journal and could not function any other way, because we see digitalization as a process that changes traditional forms of communication and cooperation, which raises the questions of control of data, information and knowledge anew. We look forward to contributions about the conditions, forms and consequences of the digitalization of society and its sub-sectors such as politics, business, science, labor, the public, civil society, law and culture. The digitalization of society has many facets: the disruptive transformation of the world of work, radical changes in the economic and innovation systems, new forms of learning and the restructuring of educational systems, the transformation of public space through digital media and platforms, changes in the way democracies function, massive challenges for the legal system and the planning and design of technical infrastructures. In light of these developments, the question arises as to how social actors can shape the digital transformation while safeguarding the foundations for individual and societal self-determination.
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Editorial: Volume 4, Issue 2
This issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society brings together contributions that deal with the transformation of the public sphere in times of digitalization from an interdisciplinary perspective. Authors are Pu Yan and Ralph Schroeder, Paddy Leerssen, Damian Trilling, and Sercan Kiyak, Stefan Mertens, David De Coninck, and Leen d’Haenens.
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Polarization and Networked Framing: The Syrian and Ukrainian Refugee Crises on X/Twitter
This exploratory study adopts a mixed-methods approach to examine the dynamics of political communication during refugee crises in German-language X (formerly Twitter), focusing on the Syrian and Ukrainian refugee influxes of September 2015 and March 2022. Using the X API, we collected 551,873 tweets related to the Syrian crisis and 236,034 tweets related to the Ukrainian crisis. The retweet networks associated with both crises were segmented into attitudinal communities by labeling them based on their position toward refugees. These networks were analyzed for polarization, community interactions and activity, influential users, and the dynamic networked framing of the crises. Our social network analysis highlighted that the online anti-refugee community exhibited greater dynamism despite being smaller in size than the pro-refugee community. Elite news media saw a decline in influence, highlighting the lack of intermediary sources between polarized users. While overall networked framing was positive about refugees during both crises, the framing of Ukrainian refugees was more complex and multifaceted. Our results underscore the disrupted state of public discourse on controversial topics and the need to reduce destructive polarization on social media.
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The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society – Volume 2, Issue 1: Editorial
This second issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society brings together four contributions that examine the role of actors and regulation in processes of digitalization from the perspective of different disciplines. The topics include the role of the Silicon Valley discourse on entrepreneurship in legitimizing a specific model of work in the IT industry, the particularities of the European platform regulation approach, the development and enforcement problems of copyright liability regulation in Germany, and the development and regulation of automation processes in the workplace.
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The Art of the (Platform) Deal: Tech Platforms, Fact Checkers, and the Politics of Truth
In January 2025, the platform company Meta abruptly announced that it would be ending its industry-leading third-party fact-checking (3PFC) program starting with fact checkers in the United States. This decision aligns with recent changes in the US administration and heralds a cultural shift in how big tech platforms approach both content moderation and political relations. Specifically, it marks a move away from policy that emphasizes consensus building towards more explicit political deal-making. This decision also highlights the vulnerabilities faced by fact checkers, whose economic model and democratic initiative largely depend on platform-supported fact checking. This article addresses the critical implications of these developments, considering the history of 3PFC as it relates to US politics, recent changes to digital information ecosystems, and the dynamics of power structures around the politics of information, technology, and truth.
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Editorial: Special Issue: Well-Being in the Digital World
Securing individual well-being represents an important societal goal. While governments across the world have introduced multiple initiatives to ensure and promote mental health, support for vulnerable population groups remains insufficient, highlighting the need for innovative approaches. Digital technologies offer the potential to enhance well-being. At the same time, their use can also result in numerous (unintended) risks. To enrich and stimulate scientific discourse in this area, this special issue presents five interdisciplinary contributions positioned at the intersection of digital technology use and users’ well-being. Topics include the effects of addictive design and dark patterns, the supportive role of online mental health communities, measuring eudaimonic virtues in technology interaction, gendered experiences and strategies for managing technostress at work, and dynamic practices of digital disconnection. Together, these papers contribute to a better understanding of the complexities behind technology use, provide a foundation for policy development, and aim to enhance societal awareness of how digital tools can shape users’ mental health and overall well-being.
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Posting from the Past: A Longitudinal Study of the Potentials of Parasocial Interaction with a Historical Figure for History Education
Historical figures have been increasingly brought into the Instagram world, providing insights into the past from a first-person perspective by addressing followers in stories or posts. This type of representation promotes the parasocial interaction (PSI) that creates the illusion of a face-to-face interaction with a media figure. This suggests the possibility that historical Instagram accounts might offer a novel platform for history education. This longitudinal study investigates PSI via actual interaction (e.g., liking and commenting on posts) with historical figures on social media. It uses the results to analyze educational potential in terms of several outcomes: interest in and knowledge about the historical figure and awareness of the historical characteristics and fictional nature of the accounts. To achieve this, followers of the German historical Instagram account @ichbinsophiescholl were surveyed at two time points (N t1 = 239; N t2 = 84). The findings reveal that actual interaction is positively related to the experience of PSI. In turn, PSI was supported by participants’ general interest in history. PSI did not increase over time but was positively associated with interest in the historical figure. Furthermore, followers experiencing PSI were more aware of the historical characteristics of the account but less aware of its fictionality.
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Content Moderation and the Quest for Democratic Legitimacy
The paper analyzes the public controversy incited by the introduction of the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) in Germany. This law obliges social media platforms to delete unlawful content from their sites and has received international attention as a regulatory blueprint for governing corporate content moderation. The paper describes different ways in which NetzDG was framed in German media reporting, which offered distinct assessments of whether the new law endangered or supported democratic principles and values. Major differences in the public controversy over NetzDG revolved around, for instance, what freedom of expression and the rule of law meant for content moderation and how NetzDG’s regulatory intervention would interact with platforms. The paper finds that a major point of contention thus concerned how to ground content moderation practices and policies in democratic legitimacy. Its analysis demonstrates that the governance of content moderation on social media platforms can open up a site for renegotiating democratic values and principles. As the NetzDG case shows, this can happen without substantively challenging existing laws but by raising the question of how to legitimately apply them to platforms. At stake in this controversy were the underlying logics by which to govern speech online. Different perspectives on this built on distinct understandings of democracy, attributing particular roles and responsibilities to platforms, state institutions, and users. Thus, the paper illuminates that the public controversy over NetzDG, and over the right way to uphold speech laws on platforms, concerned more fundamental questions about the shape of democracy and the distribution of power, agency, and responsibility.
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Education in the Digital World: Challenges and Pitfalls in the 2020s
This editorial places the topic of the special issue “Education in the Digital World” in a wider national and international context: At a national level, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (‘Kultusministerkonferenz’) initiated a national strategy in 2016 that aims to enable learners to lead a self-determined life in the digital condition (Stalder 2016). In this context, new technologies but also didactic scenarios for the various teaching contexts are to be developed and tested. This is where this Special Issue comes in with its interdisciplinary and multi-perspective contributions. Educational processes in the digital world that are based on innovative technologies, adequate didactic scenarios, and well-trained teachers, as called for by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, not only serve to implement a nationwide strategy but can also to solve problems worldwide: It seems plausible that cutting-edge solutions in the field of Education in the Digital World can be a key part of the human response to technological innovation in juxtaposition with international crises and conflicts. Finally, future challenges and opportunities for Education in the Digital World are identified and the contributions in this special issue are presented.
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Editorial: Practicing Sovereignty – Interventions for Open Digital Futures
This issue is dedicated to the Weizenbaum Conference 2022, titled ‘Practicing Sovereignty: Interventions for Open Digital Futures.’ The Weizenbaum Institute’s annual gathering brought together researchers, networks, and collaborators to focus on the theme of ‘digital sovereignty.’ This term, hotly debated and used with varying connotations in fields such as research, activism, law, and policy-making, refers to competencies, duties, and rights in digital societies. The contributions compiled in this issue are based on papers presented at the 2022 conference. They explore notions of digital sovereignty in tension with topics such as AI deepfakes, algorithmic governmentality, ethics and datafication in the context of machine learning, and community-driven open-access publishing in academia.
