Portfolio: strategy, sustainability, social impact, digital rights
"There is a continuous slate of articles, features, and other coverage that tackle “disinformation” in light of the super election year of 2024. Again and again people are asking: Can targeted disinformation campaigns manipulate opinions and influence elections? We are obviously asking ourselves these questions, too. At the same time, we want to know in... Continue Reading →
Headline after headline is pointing to the critical importance of 2024 as a super election year for democracies around the world. Many of the relevant analyses point to the multifaceted challenges to our electoral processes, including due to digital disinformation campaigns. Thankfully, there are a great number of topical experts, fact-checkers, researchers, innovators, and digital... Continue Reading →
At the beginning of 2023, my team and I kicked off our international research into good practices for countering disinformation online. This research was enriched by regional field engagements, consisting of workshops and bilateral discussions with decision-makers, experts, and relevant stakeholders, who we brought together in one comparatively central location in each region. The goal... Continue Reading →
"Online discourse has changed how we inform ourselves, what and who to trust, as well as how information is quite simply accessed. Notably on online platforms and social media, recommender systems and other design features can be gamed to fuel disinformation, hate speech, and outrage. In addition, messaging services and alternative platforms are increasingly falling... Continue Reading →
Tech companies share their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions more transparently now, but does this translate into action? Do they, in fact, reduce their emissions and improve their environmental impact. While things are moving, change isn't fast enough. Here’s the tl;dr of what I found in the 2022 data: 2022 amount of million mtCO2e | change... Continue Reading →
Since August 28, very large online platforms (VLOPs) like Instagram, TikTok and co. must comply with the new DSA requirements. Most of the 19 designated platforms and services issued (big) public announcements of their implemented changes. However, whether these hold up is a different matter entirely -- as researchers Martin Degeling and Anna Semanova found... Continue Reading →
5 papers in 5 months. Since April 2023, my colleague Charlotte Freihse and I have been working with colleagues from the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society on a monthly series of expert workshops and thought papers looking at various topics of platform governance. We developed recommendations on decentralised networks, such as the fediverse, looked... Continue Reading →
Anfang August 2023 kündigte Meta mit Threads eine dezentrale Alternative an, die mit dem Fediverse kompatibel sein -- und den Einstieg für weniger tech-affine Nutzer:innen erleichtern soll, da die Anmeldung über Instagram erfolgt. Meine Kollegin Charlotte Freihse und ich konnten dies nicht ignorieren und haben uns diese vermeintliche Alternative einmal genauer angesehen. Für den Tagesspiegel... Continue Reading →
How can we reap the potential of the fediverse? Not feeding surveillance capitalism, defending against digital colonialism, breaking with the dynamics of the attention economy -- the promises could hardly be more appealing. But what does it take to build, invest, and nourish a healthy digital space? In this first impulse, I explore options and... Continue Reading →
The Digital Services Act (DSA), which will become applicable by February 2024, has received, and deserves a lot of attention. The digital landscape is about to change substantially. Reading the 100-page copy, I noticed my mind creating an inventory, or maybe more aptly: a running account. This running account could present quite the remarkable bill... Continue Reading →
Cathleen Berger 