Exploring digital spheres

In a collaborative project researchers from Oxford and Berlin developed an index as the first economic indicator of industry-specific risk assessments related to Covid-19, based on financial disclosures of US companies. The index can provide valuable real-time information about economic risks associated with the pandemic, and it has already been featured in Oxford University News, the Washington Post, and the Wirtschaftswoche. In today's special episode we welcome the data scientists Dr. Fabian Stephany and Dr. Fabian Braesemann from the University of Oxford. The two speak with HIIG Ph.D. student Bronwen Deacon about their recent work on the CoRisk-Index. We look forward to your feedback on the episode. Please feel free to provide comments and let us know whether you would like to hear more about Social Data Science research in the future.

How do you build Digital Momentum? How do you stay visible? As the music industry is changing, big music labels are reinventing their branding strategy. This podcast explores the resulting consequences in terms of power-relations and digital flows. Lorenz Grünewald-Schukalla is a project manager in the project team Third Engagement Report, where he deals with questions of civic engagement in the digital world. Besides that he is researching the digital mediatization of music business and music culture. Therefore his Ph.D. project is about the changing relations of consumer brands and music from a media and communications perspective. He is managing director of the German Association for Music Business and Music Culture Research.

HIIG researcher Jessica Schmeiss is talking to Julia Hoxha about the collection and monitoring of medical data. Julia Hoxha is a former postdoctoral research scientist in Medical Informatics at Columbia University and co-founder and CEO of Zana, an AI-based health assistant. It is available via app, wearables and a platform, that can directly answer questions about health via voice input and enables continuous monitoring of medical factors for both patient and doctors. The episode is part of the "Demystifying AI in Entrepreneurship" project at HIIG.

Wolfgang Schulz studied law and mathematics and is now an expert on media law and algorithmic decision taking. He is the director of the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) and the Hans-Bredow-Institute in Hamburg and also advises the European Council on intermediaries – such as social media platforms, search engines and micro blogging services – and human rights. In this episode, he explains the difficulties of regulating intermediaries that increasingly can be seen as hybrids between state and society.

HIIG researcher Jessica Schmeiss interviews Uli Erxleben (Hypatos) on how exactly the startup uses deep learning automation technology for document processing and how this frees up some of our time. The episode is part of the "Demystifying AI in Entrepreneurship" project at HIIG.

What do Edward Snowden, Aaron Swartz and Phil Zimmermann have in common? This episode is all about whistleblowers, activists and other people deliberately breaking the law for a specific ideological conviction. What are the parallels of todays' digital civil disobedience to for example the civil rights movement in the US, Ghandi, Rosa Parks or the anti-nuclear energy protests in Germany. Well, and what's new? Theresa Züger, researcher at HIIG, talks with Wouter about her research insights into practices and characteristics of digital disobedience. Listen to her sharing stories of encryption, hacking and whistleblowing.

Suppose they gave war and nobody has to come. The idea of autonomous weapons is tempting for some and troubling for most, because it raises many ethical issues. Yet, what exactly do we mean when saying 'autonomous weapon systems' (AWS) – does it mean we're really taking the human out of the loop? Thomas C. Bächle and Frank Sauer met at HIIG to talk about the question of how to regulate these systems, how China or the UK deal with this, what the future of weapons looks like, what the CCW does and much more.

Are universities the best option we have? In this episode, Benedikt Fecher and Wouter talk about this question to discuss what research actually is and how we create knowledge in our society today. Science is not only about research and education, but more and more about trying to bridge the gap between scientific results and society. Also they speak about increasing science's actual impact on society and HIIG's recent project "twentyforty", an essay competition on the future of digital society in 2040.

In dieser Folge geht es um die großen Fragen unserer Zeit: die Komplexität in der modernen Gesellschaft, wie Facebook Facebook geworden ist und ob es überhaupt vorstellbare Alternativen zur Digitalisierung gibt. Die digitale Technologie ist jung, aber das grundlegende Problem, dass sie zu lösen versucht, ist alt. Das ist die These, die Armin Nassehi in seinem Buch „Muster“ formuliert. HIIG-Direktorin Jeanette Hofmann diskutiert mit Nassehi, worin dieses Problem genau besteht und ob wir Digitalisierung eventuell auch anders verstehen können.

HIIG researcher Christian Katzenbach speaks about the responsibility of platforms and the content that they host, regulative mechanisms as well as the widely discussed EU directive on copyright better known for its proposed upload filter and Article 13. Also in the conversation with Wouter Bernhard, they discuss Zuckerberg's hearing in the US as well as the role of AI for content moderation.