Corporate Social Responsibilityin the Blogosphere

This paper uses social network analysis to examine the interaction between corporate blogs devoted to sustainability issues and the blogosphere, a clustered online network of collaborative actors. By analyzing the structural embeddedness of a prototypical blog in a virtual community, we show the potential of online platforms to document corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and to engage with an increasingly socially and ecologically aware stakeholder base. The results of this study show that stakeholder involvement via sustainability blogs is a valuable new practice for CSR communications and stakeholder engagement. It also opens new horizons for communicating CSR issues to key constituencies onlin

Das Internet. Medienevolution oder Medienrevolution?

Jede neue Medientechnologie löst ebenso Heilsversprechen wie Horrorszenarien aus. Prognosen zur Zukunft einer vernetzten Welt, die im Wesentlichen auf der Plattform Internet basieren wird, beinhalten ebenfalls alle Ausprägungen einer nach oben und unten offenen Bewertungsskala. Dies betrifft die Konsequenzen des Netzes bzw. der Netzwerktechnologie und ihre Auswirkungen auf das politische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Leben in einer vernetzten Welt, vor allem aber die Neuordnungen im Medienensemble. Dass man mit solchen Prognosen bedachtsam umgehen muss, erschließt sich aus einer kulturgeschichtlichen Retrospektive der jeweils zeitgebundenen Bewertungen neuer Technologien und ihrer Zukunftsoptionen. (...) EnglishMiriam Meckel: The Internet: Evolution or Revolution of the Media?The internet will change the structure of our society in forming a network, decentralising existing social structures and in providing continuos access to the most recent facts in an unlimited number of combinations. Due to this networking the search for information is no longer confined to a surface dimension but makes use of the in-depth structure of the virtual environment. Providers and users of information therefore have to do some rethinking: under the conditions of networking, information processing is no longer linear but functions reflexively. Furthermore it is no longer based on stratifi.cational hierarchic patterns but rather on associative cybernetic models. Growing memory capaeitles and extensive information possibilities cause a competition for the attention of the users. Attention as a resource will increasingly determine the development of markets defi.ning themselves through information as a good or information about goods. The established forms of media will continue to exist but they will also have to develop further. The individual interfaces in the networked communicative process will not grow together but will rather further differentiate on the basis of mutual technological platform. The internet and network communication are embedded in an evolutionary process of media culture. As in previous processes of change, similar indicators and factors can be recognised. A revolution of communication does therefore not lie ahead. In contrast, we are facing a continuous and long-term adaptation to partly new conditions of network communication. (...

Social Media — Herausforderungen für den Journalismus

Zusammenfassung: Das journalistische Geschäftsmodell steckt in einer Krise. Nicht nur die Leserzahlen sinken, sondern auch die Werbeeinnahmen — sowohl die Leser als auch die Werbegelder wandern ab ins Internet. Doch genau dort bietet das Internet mit den sozialen Medien dem Journalismus auch eine Chance, sich neu zu definieren. Durch ein neues Rollenverständnis und ein verändertes Verhältnis zwischen Lesern und Journalisten kann der Journalismus beweisen, dass er noch immer Mehrwerte schafft, die nicht ersetzt werden könne

Under big brother's watchful eye: Cross-country attitudes toward facial recognition technology

Governments around the world are adopting facial recognition technology (FRT) to improve public services and law enforcement. Past research has shown that such applications may result in discriminatory effects and threaten privacy. This study shines light on the question of what drives public opinion regarding FRT in different socio-political contexts. Based on an online survey and semi-structured interviews, this study finds that citizens in China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States differ in their acceptance of the official public use of FRT. China has the highest approval rates, Germany and the US have the lowest, and the UK lies in the middle. Our results show that people are generally more willing to accept FRT in public spheres when they trust government institutions, believe the technology should be managed by the central government, and have an affinity for technology. People's awareness of a country's previous history of surveillance further shapes their perceptions of FRT. Across all four countries, we also show that privacy concerns, especially of FRT compromising one's privacy, have the biggest influence on respondents' attitudes. Expanding on existing research into FRT acceptance and usage, our results suggest that policymakers urgently need to address the current regulatory vacuum

AI Suffrage: A four-country survey on the acceptance of an automated voting system

Governments have begun to employ technological systems that use massive amounts of data and artificial intelligence (AI) in the domains of law enforcement, public health, or social welfare. In some areas, shifts in public opinion increasingly favor technology-aided public decision-making. This development presents an opportunity to explore novel approaches to how technology could be used to reinvigorate democratic governance and how the public perceives such changes. The study therefore posits a hypothetical AI voting system that mediates political decision-making between citizens and the state. We conducted a four-country online survey (N=6043) in Greece, Singapore, Switzerland, and the US to find out what factors affect the public’s acceptance of such a system. The data show that Singaporeans are most likely and Greeks least likely to accept the system. Considerations of the technology’s utility have a large effect on acceptance rates across cultures whereas attitudes towards political norms and political performance have partial effects

Overview of business models for Web 2.0 communities

A new type of communities is gaining momentum on the web and is reshaping online communication and collaboration patterns and the way how information is consumed and produced [Gros04, Kolb06]. Examples of such communities are Wikipedia, MySpace, OpenBC, YouTube, Folksonomies, numerous Weblogs and others. In literature different terms can be found to denote the emerging and growing new phenomenon: social software [Bäch06] or peer production [Scho05]. In the year 2005, Tim O'Reilly popularized the term Web 2.0 [O'Reil05]. While the first two terms can be applied also to earlier, already established forms of online communities (for an overview see [Stan02]), the term Web 2.0 is mostly applied to emphasize the differences of emerging communities compared to earlier forms of online communities, encompassing various perspectives - technology, attitude, philosophy. (...

Journalists' professional identity

The internet, and particularly social media, have brought far-reaching change to journalism by calling into question how journalists’ traditional roles are perceived. We introduce social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1986) ― specifically the concept of professional identity ― as a complementary approach to study journalistic role conceptions from a dynamic perspective. Building on existing findings in both research streams (professional identity and journalistic role conceptions), we undertook a qualitative study to explore the interplay between journalists’ role perceptions, core values of journalism, and ongoing change in the industry. Our analysis of 26 interviews conducted in a Swiss newsroom provided an affirmative answer to the question whether journalists’ professional identity serves as a resource that helps them cope with uncertainty. By identifying different identity negotiation mechanisms we illustrate journalists’ sensemaking of developments in their work environment. We show that journalists who rely on an elitist, traditional role concept construct online journalism as a threat to quality journalism and journalists’ personal status. Another group of journalists with more service-oriented and solutions-oriented role concepts strives to improve newspaper’s online journalism. These journalists engage in creating new, adapted role scripts and value definitions