Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society

ABSTRACT Aiming to expand current research on the mechanisms and conditions under which novel citizenship norms emerge among different populations, we investigate the antecedents of discursive citizenship norms among Latinx individuals in the United States. Results from a two-wave survey suggest that cross-platform news media repertoires are positively associated with individual information care norms and considered contribution norms. Social media political discussion mediates these relationships. Exposure to negative news covering Latinx communities moderated the association between media repertoires and individual information care norms. Contributions and implications for discursive citizenship norms research are discussed.

Conceptual models are used to help professionals understand complex information systems and solve problems during systems analysis and design. Because single model often do not represent all relevant information, typically multiple models are used in combination. To design effective combinations of models, we propose a systematic approach that uses color highlighting to foreground overlapping concepts between multiple models to help readers identify corresponding information between models. We conducted two empirical studies – an online experiment and an eye-tracking experiment – to evaluate the cognitive efficacy of this approach. Our findings suggest that color highlighting can somewhat improve participants’ domain understanding but not the efficiency of problem-solving. Findings from the eye-tracking study suggest that the use of color can have both beneficial and harmful effects, depending on the extent of overlap.

Automation is considered a key component of the Business Process Management (BPM) discipline. Existing research within BPM considers the consequences and impacts of automation primarily in technical terms, and other disciplines, such as psychology, focus on individual implications. To facilitate a discussion of the long-term consequences and risks of automation initiatives within BPM and to characterize the discourse around automation in BPM, we draw upon Critical Theory and the notion of rationality. By reviewing how case studies justify, conduct, and evaluate automation initiatives, we identify rationalities present in existing papers and assess what implications are discussed and which are left out of the automation discourse. We observe that most papers are primarily justified with and focussed on performance improvements, and that potential implications from this focus, such as depersonalization and alienation, are almost invisible in the discussion. Based on this, we offer impulses for practitioners and researchers on how the discourse on automation and its risks can be broadened. Further, we contribute to the community by integrating concepts from Critical Theory.

ABSTRACT Customer reviews on sharing economy platforms like Airbnb have been studied extensively. However, their effectiveness has recently been questioned. We investigate their role regarding listing churn on Airbnb using panel data. We find that listings with few or poor ratings will likely leave the platform. Correcting for the listings’ characteristics, we find that the best possible rating strongly predicts the listings’ success. We conclude that the best rating is a necessary but insufficient condition for success.

The preconditions for professional authority are changing. To accomplish authority, many professionals today need to actively develop more attentive relations with their stakeholders. In this study we examine how professionals can accomplish such relational authority over the public during staged performances. The research context of our study are science slams, events at which scientists take the stage to present their research to non-professional audiences. Analyzing video-recordings of more than 300 science slam performances, we found that the professionals on stage accomplish relational authority through two consecutive and closely linked steps. They first alienate the public by making protective claims to their professional authority. Subsequently, they relate with the public by making claims to a shared social world. Our study contributes to research on the changing nature of expert work, by unpacking how professionals can actively forge more meaningful connections with the public as an important but mostly overlooked stakeholder group.

Academic studies prior to the pandemic rather emphasized that the progression towards Industry 4.0 happened in an incremental manner. However, the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic have led to considerable investments that were widely interpreted as a (generalized) digitalization push. However, little is known about the character of such investments and their effects. The goal of this contribution is to provide an empirically based overview of recent investment in digital technologies in six economic sectors of the German economy: mechanical engineering, chemicals, automotives, logistics, healthcare, and financial services. Based on 36 case studies and a survey at 540 companies, we investigate the following questions: 1. How much did the COVID-19 pandemic reduce existing obstacles for investments in digitalization measures? 2. Is there a universal digitalization push due to the COVID-19 pandemic that differs from the trajectory before the pandemic? The results show that the pandemic affected investment in an unequal manner. It was driven by the immediate need to sustain business operations through the virtualization of communication among employees and with external partners. However, there was less dynamism in shop-floor-related digitalization, as it was less related to epidemiological concerns and is more long-term in nature.

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ABSTRACT When new technologies like smart speaker assistants (SSAs) enter private spaces, new threats to privacy emerge. Drawing on the concepts of privacy work [Nippert-Eng, C. E. (2010). Islands of privacy. University of Chicago Press.] and contextual integrity [Nissenbaum, H. F. (2010). Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford Law Books.], this study uses qualitative interviews to explore two questions about SSAs: (1) Which kinds of privacy work do users do?, and (2) What rationales underlie users’ privacy perceptions? We identify a variety of new types of privacy work, such as limiting the dissemination of one’s voice data to a single company, or interrupting conversations during accidental SSA activation. We also identify new privacy rationales including anticipated consequences of information leaks, the importance of users’ privacy skills and awareness, and the role of choice in whether and how to use SSAs. Based on our analysis of privacy rationales, we propose an expansion of the model of contextual integrity [Nissenbaum, H. F. (2010). Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford Law Books.] to improve our ability to understand how users perceive privacy with SSAs and other voluntarily adopted home information technologies. Furthermore, we find that even SSA users who say they have no privacy concerns actually work to protect their privacy. These results complicate previous theory which said that privacy concerns lead to protective behaviour because they suggest that the relationship between these two concepts may be reversed.