Search Results
Search Results
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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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Commodification and Disruption: Theorizing Digital Capitalism
There is little disagreement that digital technologies are transforming contemporary economies and societies. However, scholars have only begun to systematically think about how digitalization – the process whereby more and more of what we say, think, and do becomes mediated by digital technologies – is both driven by and transformative of capitalism. This paper argues that when one speaks about digitalization, one cannot be silent about capitalism. It reconstructs commodification and disruption as key features of capitalist development. It then shows how three digital revolutions – the platform, (big) data, and artificial intelligence revolutions – have ushered in a new wave of commodification and disruption, giving rise to digital capitalism. Finally, it discusses the challenges commodification and disruption pose in the form of redistribution of resources, rebalancing of power, rule adaption, and market re-embedding. The paper brings together a wide range of scholarship to offer a historically and theoretically grounded framework for how to think about and study the rise of digital capitalism.
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Labor-atories of Digital Economies: Latin America as a Site of Struggles and Experimentation
This article argues that the digital labor developments and struggles are labor-atories of digital economies, with special focus in Latin America. This means that, on the one hand, capital is experimenting and updating forms of control and exploitation - through the long trajectory of informality and dependency and, on the other hand, workers are trying and experimenting forms of organizing and collectivities, also updating Latin American rich histories of organizing, solidarity economies and community technologies. The emphasis on “labor” means that these laboratories are products of class struggles and capital-labor relationships. The paper unpacks the argument with four short insights from ongoing research: 1) Latin America as not only of research site; 2) The updating of informality in the Latin American AI context; 3) Global implications of data work, AI value chains, and the cultural sector; 4) Digital solidarity economies as a Latin American response to the current digital labor scenario, including digital sovereignty and autonomy.
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The Digipolitical and African Political Thought: A Theoretical Framework to Interpret the Political in the Digital Age
Today, digitality is pervasive across all spheres of human social and political life. To inquire into digital-engendered ontologies, this paper presents a theoretical framework undergirding African political thought for the study of the political sphere in digitality, or the digipolitical. This neologism refers to the political as an ontological category redefined via its intersection with the digital. This understanding rests on three premises: the characteristics of the digital, a sui generis virtual reality; the algorithmic architecture of the cyber socio-political space; and the onto-relational nature of the political subjects, which entails the interplay of the analogue with digital-humans. Regarding more recent disciplines and theories, such as posthumanism, this paper brings to the fore insights offered by African political thought, which has long emphasized reading individuals, communities, and structures of power through the lens of the political centered on the concept of relationality. I defend the assertion that the relational approach inscribed in African political philosophies offers valuable insight into digital political onto-relationalities, as it discloses power from in-between spaces and details its dynamics.
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Personal Responsibility and Beyond: Developing a Comprehensive Conceptualization of Digital Citizenship Competences
As digital transformation reshapes society, it is crucial to understand the evolving demands on education to prepare individuals for this new reality. Although the conceptualizations and objectives vary, digital citizenship education (DCE) typically aims to equip individuals with the competencies necessary not just to thrive in digital and democratic societies but also to critically analyze and actively shape them. However, existing efforts often focus too narrowly on technical skills and online safety, overlooking the broader notion of citizenship in educational contexts. This article addresses this gap by examining the conceptualization of citizenship within the field of DCE, led primarily by the structure of Choi’s (2016) concept analysis, and proposing a more comprehensive framework based on the citizenship ideals by Westheimer and Kahne (2004). Drawing on existing frameworks and synthesizing various DCE approaches, the article presents the Integrated Framework of Abilities for Digital Citizenship (Infra-DC). We then examine existing measurement instruments to determine their alignment with the proposed framework. This conceptual work contributes to advancing DCE efforts by promoting a nuanced understanding of citizenship and providing guidance for future research, program development, and evaluation.
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Who Can Still Afford to Do Digital Activism? Exploring the Material Conditions of Online Mobilisation
Digital activism is now considered a widespread form of activism. Studies on its impact and use have proliferated. Most research into this phenomenon has tended to analyze the impact of digital technologies on action and activism. In contrast, this study explores the role of organizations and organizational structures, focusing on internal processes and the functioning of digital campaigning. Based on ethnographic observation and interviews with staff of online campaigning organizations, this paper presents findings on how digital communication and its logic can affect the organization’s internal processes. The paper challenges two established ideas: a) the idea of de-materialization of organizational structures from digital activism; b) that digital platforms tend to support the dissemination of opinions of previously marginalized actors. My fieldwork’s findings demonstrate that the reality in both cases is far more nuanced, with significant identifiable inconsistencies. This research shows that organizations and organizational structures have not de-materialized and that the material conditions of digital activism are key to better understanding this phenomenon and new forms of inequality it might generate.
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Pay Cashless and Be Clueless About Your Data? Navigating Tensions of Data Use in Digital Payments
This article analyzes the use practices of payment data along the payment processing chain in Europe. By first mapping the key actors involved in digital payments and their data use practices, this research offers novel insights into the multiplicity of actors that intermingle when a digital payment is made. The findings are interpreted through an adaptation of Zygmuntowski’s data governance trilemma, which seeks to balance three objectives in the context of payment data: preserving privacy, monetizing data, and enabling law enforcement. The article shows that the widespread interest in data does not stop at payment data. Preserving privacy is difficult to pinpoint due to the opacity, lack of transparency, and complexity of the data processing behind a digital payment. Meanwhile, monetizing data is a core practice for many actors, although it is pursued with varying levels of vigor. The growing availability of data poses significant risks, as information initially collected for payment processing may be used to enable law enforcement. Promising alternatives such as Wero and the digital euro could help curb the dominance of non-European players, increase transparency, and offer data-minimizing payment options.
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The Ideal Worker Revisited: A Gender Perspective on Technostress at the Office
This paper explores technostress in office work with a focus on gender dynamics. Employing an exploratory study design and focus group discussions, the research reveals that digitalization within organizations can lead to technostress through the emergence of techno-overload, techno-invasion, and techno-uncertainty. This paper highlights how employees, rather than organizations, develop individual strategies for coping with technostress, meaning that it is the former who are often burdened with managing technostress. Women, particularly mothers with dependent children, are disproportionately affected, juggling work and childcare through flexible schedules but facing invisible workloads and continuous connectivity. These challenges underscore a persistent gendered division of labor. We conclude that while digital technologies offer opportunities, an absence of consciously shaped strategies can heighten employee risks, particularly those related to gender disparities.
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Defending Informational Sovereignty by Detecting Deepfakes? Opportunities and Risks of an AI-Based Detector for Deepfakes-Based Disinformation and Illegal Activities
This paper investigates possible contributions that an AI-based detector for deepfakes could make to the challenge of responding to new forms of cyberthreats, including fraud and disinformation as a threat to democracy. The paper investigates the implications of such a tool for the emerging European discourse on digital sovereignty in a global environment. While cybersecurity and disinformation are certainly not new topics, recent technological developments relating to AI-generated deepfakes have increased the manipulative potential of video and audio-based content spread online, making it a specific but important challenge in the global and interconnected information context.
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The Emergence of Platform Regulation in the UK: An Empirical-Legal Study
Online platforms have emerged as a new kind of regulatory object. In this article, we empirically map the emergence of the field of platform regulation in one country: the United Kingdom (UK). We focus on the 18-month period between September 2018 and February 2020 when an upsurge of regulatory activism reflected increasing sensitivity to national sovereignty in the context of Brexit. Through an empirical–legal content analysis of eight official reports issued by the UK government, parliamentary committees, and regulatory agencies, we code the online harms to which regulation is being asked to respond; identify relevant subject domains of law (such as data protection and privacy, competition, education, media and broadcasting, consumer protection, tax law and financial regulation, intellectual property law, security law); and analyze the agencies referred in the reports for their centrality in the regulatory network and their regulatory powers. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of “field,” we observe the emergence of regulators with investigatory and enforcement powers that stand in mutually unstable power relations to each other as well as vis-à-vis shifting executive and legislative interventions. Online platforms appear to acquire authority to exercise state powers.
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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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Reshaping the Legal Categories of Work: Digital Labor Platforms at the Borders of Labor Law
The article questions the fundamental paradigms of labor law in view of the challenges presented by digital platform work. It uses heuristic methods, namely legal doctrine and labor law theory, to show how legal concepts of employment have been informed by organization theory. It proposes taking lessons from organizational analyses of market organizing that have already addressed new organizational forms with some precision. This approach would facilitate the development of a consistent and effective regulatory design for digital labor platforms. The design would include two levels: First, regulation should modify the criteria and indicators for classifying workers, either in the employment category or in a new category, to capture indirect mechanisms of worker control such as feedback and rating systems. Second, the rights and obligations associated with labor law, as well as the participation and governance structures, must be reformulated to address indirect control and the social dynamics of virtual workplaces.
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The Automation of Management and the Multiplication of Labor: On the Role of Algorithmic Management in the Recomposition of Labor
Digital technologies are increasingly used to automatically organize, measure, and control labor in many sectors and industries. This article offers an analysis of how digital technologies, particularly algorithmic management, not only reshape the ways in which work is done and controlled but also drive profound transformations in the division and composition of labor. Drawing on qualitative and ethnographic studies of the gig economy, this research article demonstrates how the digital automation of management serves as a prerequisite for efficiently and flexibly incorporating highly heterogeneous workforces into production processes. This is first demonstrated by an analysis of the online gig economy and its capacity to integrate a wide range of geographically dispersed workers into digital production processes. Then, the paper examines the role of migrant labor in the urban gig economy, contending that in this context too, digital technologies and algorithmic management play a crucial role in the flexible and efficient inclusion of highly diverse workforces. This ultimately illustrates how digital technologies for automated management are integral to a multifaceted process of workforce heterogenization, a phenomenon that can be conceptualized within the framework of the multiplication of labor.
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The European Strive for Digital Sovereignty: Have We Lost Our Belief in the Global Promises of the ‘Free and Open Internet’?
Digital sovereignty is the buzzword of the hour in European digital policy debates. But what if it was something more fundamental than just a new policy principle? This short essay analyses shifts in the belief system that underlies our idea of the global Internet in order to better understand the European digital sovereignty debate within its historical and political context. For this purpose, it identifies three different types of dependency that shape today’s global digital order and explains how the perceptions of these dependencies motivate the EU’s claims for more digital self-determination. What come apparent is that the liberal imaginary of an ‘open and free Internet’ could not hold up to reality and that we are in urgent need of alternative visions for a globally interconnected world. The European digital sovereignty debate can be interpreted as the first stage in the search for such an alternative. Whether it will be able to fill the gap, remains questionable.
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Trapped in the Matrix: Algorithmic Control and Worker Dispossession in the African Platform Economy
Digital labor platforms are reshaping the work landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa, promising enhanced productivity and empowerment. Yet, this study reveals a more complex reality, particularly in Rwanda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Based on 41 in-depth interviews, it exposes how algorithmic management systems deeply erode worker autonomy, highlighting significant financial, task, and behavioral dispossession. This research, grounded in neo-Marxist and postcolonial theories, scrutinizes the nuanced limitations of autonomy and the pervasive control exerted by algorithmic management, reflecting the lived experiences of workers. The findings illuminate enduring patterns of accumulation that echo historical exploitation, maintaining asymmetric power dynamics and dependence. Despite this, the study captures the agency of workers as they navigate and resist these systemic constraints, challenging the dominant techno-optimistic narrative. It underscores the critical need for contextually informed empirical research to shape policies that champion equity and elevate marginalized voices during transformative economic shifts.
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Multidimensional Digital Inequalities: Theoretical Framework, Empirical Investigation, and Policy Implications of Digital Inequalities among Older Adults
Older adults represent the fastest-growing age group in the global north and are among the most affected by digital inequality. This study investigates the most important factors related with Internet use among older adults in Switzerland. Hereby, the individual context (i.e., gender, age, education, income, preretirement PC use) is found to be responsible for Internet access and frequency of use, while the support by an individual’s social context is related with inequalities regarding skills, diversity of use, and beneficial outcomes. Our theoretical framework suggests a systematic typology of four distinct relationships between dimensions of inequality. Empirical evidence for maintaining (e.g., income), reinforcing (e.g., age), mitigating (e.g., gender), and modifying relationships (e.g., encouragement by friends and family) support this framework and implications for future research and policy interventions are discussed. It becomes evident that the relationships between the dimensions are crucial for any setting in which digital inequalities are found on multiple dimensions. Given the steady innovation of new technologies and online services, the relevance of a multidimensional perspective is likely to increase.
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Counter-Hegemonic Neoliberalism: Making Sense of EU Platform Regulation
The platforms that hold the power in the digital economy, and the politics that surround them, are a central topic in contemporary political economy. The EU is widely perceived as a digital laggard, as it is home to very few leading digital corporations, and it is exposed to the market hegemony of the Big Tech platforms. Moreover, the EU is often considered the pioneer of digital regulation, and its platform politics have gained momentum as the EU Commission has unleashed a swathe of new regulatory initiatives, ranging from competition policies to governance of digital content, data flows and platform work. In this essay, we treat platform control and regulation as a matter of contested market design. We offer an analysis of the recent stream of EU platform regulation, questioning how it relates to the historical trajectory of the platform economy and established path dependencies within the EU. We argue that it is characterized by a critical approach to the power of digital platforms and a continuation of negative integration in the EU, and we suggest that it should be understood as a manifestation of counter-hegemonic neoliberalism, as it essentially enforces market-based governance of society through political market design.
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Participatory, Agile, Co-creative: Identifying Topics for a Future-Oriented, Innovative Research on Digital Transformation
The importance of an adaptive and participatory scientific research process outside of the proverbial ivory tower is increasing. This is especially true in research on digital transformation, where topics are investigated in the context of their multidimensional socio-technological interdependencies. It is key to understand how research on digital transformation responds to these complexities, to what extent citizens’ needs are effectively integrated as areas of scientific exploration, and how up-to-date topics can be identified. In commercial industry endevours, for example, the participation and collaboration of different stakeholders are seen as fundamental parts of work processes in order to create and leverage inter- and transdisciplinary synergies. Scientific research also has a promising history of different participatory approaches. In this context, we suggest a concept for the adaptation and implementation of such approaches to enable participatory, agile, and co-creative academic research. Our example is a structured process based on the innovation framework “Double Diamond,” which is implemented to identify relevant topics for research on digital transformation. This process – characterized by a continuous alternation between collecting and condensing findings – included five qualitative and quantitative studies. The results of these studies are presented and discussed considering the specific needs and values of participatory approaches in research on digital transformation.
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Coordinating Digital Transformation: The Discursive Context of Production in the Knowledge Economy
This article introduces the concept of the “discursive context of production” in order to explain how the transition to the knowledge economy affects working conditions. Past episodes of economic adjustment saw national institutions in corporatist countries protect working conditions by facilitating coordination between employers and workers in the workplace. Where workers had the capacity to enforce these institutions, they succeeded, for instance, in defending against mass layoffs. Digital transformation, however, has led managers to adopt the market discourse of the knowledge economy, which allows them to dissuade workers from mobilizing. With their mechanisms for enforcement undermined, national institutions are less effective in protecting workers from employer discretion, thereby exposing them to the threat of job loss during economic adjustment. Relying on a case study of mass layoffs at a technology firm in Germany, this article uses process tracing to illustrate how discourse constitutes an important contextual feature that conditions the causal linkage between digital transformation and the ineffectiveness of national institutions. Understanding how digital transformation affects working conditions requires tracing how discursive change in the workplace reconfigures power relations between managers and workers.
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The Politics of Risk in the Digital Services Act: A Stakeholder Mapping and Research Agenda
The EU’s 2022 Digital Services Act requires large online platforms to regularly assess and mitigate ‘systemic risks’ to various public-interest goals, including fundamental rights, civic discourse, public health and security. Drawing on social constructionist understandings of risk, this article theorizes systemic risk management under the DSA as an arena for political power and contestation, since translating its broadly-defined abstract principles into actionable risk management procedures will entail making many contestable political decisions about how online platforms should be governed. This raises the question: who will exercise power in these decision-making processes? Providing some first answers to this question, this article makes three key contributions. First, it maps the key stakeholder groups involved, and the legal and institutional mechanisms through which they can participate in DSA systemic risk management. Second, it critically analyzes the power dynamics and unequal resources that will structure stakeholder participation. Third, this stakeholder mapping provides a foundation for future research on the politics of DSA systemic risks. The article concludes with reflections on directions for future research on the political agendas, priorities and strategies that shape platform governance.
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Algorithmic Management in the Food Delivery Sector – a Contested Terrain?
Forms of algorithmic management (AM) play an essential role in organizing food-delivery work by deploying artificial intelligence-based systems to coordinate driver routes. Given the risks of precarity and threats posed by AM, which are typically related to (migrant) platform work, the question arises to what extent structures of co-determination can positively shape this type of work and the technologies involved. Based on an in-depth case study within a large food-delivery company, this article is guided by two questions: (1) How do companies use algorithm-based management and performance control, and how do the couriers perceive them? (2) What priorities, strategies, resources, and achievements do works councils and trade unions have with regard to co-determination practices? Our analyses indicate that algorithmic management poses problems of non-transparency and information asymmetry, which in turn call for new forms of and procedures for co-determination. Our study does not find evidence that AM practices aim to individually profile and discipline couriers. The main challenges for the works council and trade unions arise from the couriers’ generally precarious working and employment conditions; data- and AM-related issues do not represent the central area of conflict. However, our study identifies new demands regarding the co-determination of AM and underlines the importance of institutional regulation at the legal and sectoral level.
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Educational Impulses for Redesigning (Online) Teaching in the Post-Pandemic World: A Discussion and Evaluation of Lessons Learned
This article reflects on the challenge of online teaching from the perspective of media didactics, a perspective that gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The qualitative-reconstructive study reflects on 65 multidisciplinary papers written during the pandemic. Together, these studies empirically examine the challenges, achievements, and failures of the first large-scale experiment in university teaching during that time and include quantitative empirical studies and qualitative first-hand accounts from university lectures that document how scholars adapted their courses from on-campus teaching to online teaching. Many approaches are innovative and creative, while some are not really new, at least from the perspective of media education. Still, many teachers with limited exposure to media-based or online teaching pre-pandemic broke new ground in their individual teaching. Of course, learning is an individual process. Nevertheless, expectations that university teaching would be fundamentally redesigned were almost inevitably destined for disappointment due to the pandemic’s suddenness, a lack of didactic knowledge, technical and organizational hurdles, and various other individual challenges. It is now clear that the emergency online semesters have permanently changed university teaching. Learning from both successes and failures, this article proposes the design and development of good (online) teaching for post-pandemic times. It bases its proposals on the documented experiences of teachers, on empirical data, and on three practical examples.
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Digital Education Ecosystems: Visions and Decision Needs
With the funding line for the so-called Nationale Bildungsplattform (National Education Platform), the German federal government attracted a great deal of attention within the national education landscape in 2021. Alongside praise for the ambitious initiative, there was also criticism of individual aspects. Until the release of the closed beta under the new name Mein Bildungsraum (My Education Space) in the fall of 2023, public discussion was quieter. Recently, with the handover of essential middleware components to the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, the initiative is now visibly picking up speed again in the summer of 2024. However, the vision still remains vague, and some doubts persist about the feasibility of the goals set. Against this backdrop, the article explores the question of which target images of a digital ecosystem for education are recognizable and which decisions are required to define a tangible – and therefore also implementable – vision.
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Beyond Open Access: Open Educational Resources for Legal Clarity, Sustainability, and Digital Sovereignty in European University Alliances
Open educational resources (OER) are widely recognized for improving access to education and enabling the sharing of knowledge. However, in the context of European university alliances such as Unite!, OER offer additional, often underappreciated benefits that are crucial for cross-border collaboration and sustainable development in higher education. This paper explores three key aspects of OER that are particularly relevant to European alliances. First, OER enable the legally secure use of educational resources across national borders, addressing uncertainties about copyright laws, particularly for translations and adaptations. This ensures compliance with different legal frameworks while fostering collaboration. Second, OER support sustainability by ensuring that investments in educational materials are not limited by restrictive usage rights. This is especially critical in alliances where shared resources are central to fostering long-term cooperation and aligning with sustainability goals, a priority for Unite!. Finally, OER contribute to digital sovereignty by empowering institutions and educators to create, adapt, and share resources without relying on proprietary platforms or licenses. This coincides with European alliances’ broader strategic objective of promoting autonomy and resilience in their digital ecosystems. By highlighting these often-overlooked benefits of OER, the present research aims to broaden the perspective on their strategic importance in fostering collaboration, sustainability, and sovereignty within European university alliances.
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Dark Patterns and Addictive Designs
The proliferation of digital platforms has given rise to manipulative design practices known as “dark patterns,” which exploit users’ vulnerabilities to influence behavior, leading them to make decisions against their own interests. Among these, addictive designs have emerged as a particularly concerning subset, systematically capturing and manipulating user attention to create compulsive engagement. This paper explores the concept of addictive designs as a type of dark pattern, examining their manipulative nature, impact on user autonomy, and potential harm to well-being. By analyzing the current legal framework in the European Union related to dark patterns, including the General Data Protection Regulation, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the Digital Services Act, this paper identifies significant gaps in how the challenges posed by addictive designs are addressed. The paper makes three key suggestions for effectively regulating these practices and protecting users’ rights: clarifying the definition and scope of dark patterns to encompass both interface designs and algorithmic systems; recognizing the value of attention in shaping personal autonomy and considering attention rights as a distinct category of protection in digital regulations; and amending consumer protection laws to address the online manipulation of digital markets.
