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The final session on day one of the Weizenbaum Conference starts with a second paper by Victoria Vziatysheva, whose focus here is on how users perceive search engine bias. Search engines are amongst the most critical elements of Internet infrastructure, but are sometimes criticised for supposed biases in their results; this may affect how users engage with them.

Users tend to trust algorithmic systems more when they are perceived to be fair, and such trust is also affected by users’ knowledge about these systems: users with limited knowledge tend to be more trusting. Search engine users tend to have folk …

The next speaker in this Weizenbaum Conference session is Victoria Vziatysheva; she begins by noting that pre-existing beliefs affect what information we engage with – this is selective exposure. But studies have also shown that the use of search engines can reduce selective exposure; whether this is the case also depends on the way search queries are formulated in the first place, however.

Victoria’s project explored this in the context of a Swiss referendum on a responsible economy within the planet’s limits (which was ultimately rejected); this connected voting intentions on this referendum with search queries that reflected attitudes for …

The next speaker in this Weizenbaum Conference session is Lion Wedel, who begins by highlighting the definitional uncertainties about news and news actors online. This can lead to a misrepresentation of the news and information uses by particular demographic groups, such as young people.

One way to work around this is to focus on the informativeness of sources, rather than a more narrow definition of what is news; but how can this be assessed for a given source? This project worked with participant donations of data download packages from social media platforms, connected with a representative two-wave panel study of …

The next speaker in this Weizenbaum Conference session is Quentin Bukold, whose interest is in mass comment campaigns, for instance in response to European Union public consultation efforts. Such campaigns encourage large numbers of supporters to send a pre-formulated text in response to an online consultation effort; this is essentially spamming the consultation form, but might nonetheless represent some facet of public opinion.

Mass comment campaigns thereby jeopardise legitimate public consultation processes, but also provide information about the mobilisation potential of critical interest groups; however, there are few effective ways for identifying, describing, and responding to such campaigns.

This hinges …

The next session at the Weizenbaum Conference starts with the great Curd Knüpfer, with an article on what he calls the logic of connective faction (see what he did there?). He begins by noting that online spaces empower some people more than others; they also enable networked propaganda, connect problematic groups through ‘deep stories’, and provide digital surrogate networks – often especially benefitting right-wing actors.

In other words, then, there is a logic of connection faction here, facilitating specific network ties based on communicative acts; this takes on quasi-organisational functions, and enables organisations to connect in digital surrogate networks; and …

The final speaker in this session at the Weizenbaum Conference is Maysa Amer, whose focus is on platform governance especially in Egypt. Platform governance has been variously approached through self-regulation (in the US), through a citizen rights-centric regulation (in the EU), or through state-led regulation (in China); how is it approached in Egypt, however?

Since the Arab Spring, which served as a substantial disruption of established governance models, Egypt has increased its regulation for digital technologies; new media laws and digital protection regulations also addressed mis- and disinformation, but in doing so also created mechanisms for targeting critical civic actors …

The next speaker at the Weizenbaum Conference is Regina Cazzamatta, whose focus is on the disruption of public spheres in Europe and Latin America by regressive ‘alternative’ media. ‘Alternative’ here is a problematic term, as some outlets are alternative in a progressive sense, trying to provide a platform for marginalised voices, while others are much more regressive and illiberal in ideology and spread mis- and disinformation. Here, the focus is on the latter category of outlets.

How do such regressive outlets justify their institutional roles, then? The project focussed on some 65 such sites that had been identified by fact-checkers …

The next session at the Weizenbaum Conference starts with Mona Krewel, whose interest is in (micro-)targeted advertising in elections; she explores this here especially in the context of the 2024 US presidential election. All parties use such advertising, and tend to target voters whom they assume are ideologically close to them; our understanding of how this works is limited, however, and based largely on self-reporting from campaign managers (which is not necessarily reliable).

A different approach to this is via the Meta Ad Targeting dataset, which is problematic for other reasons; the present project explored the targeting strategies of some …

I’m in Berlin this week for the annual conference of the excellent Weizenbaum-Institut, which opens with a keynote by the great Claes de Vreese, whose keynote asks whether citizens are ready for an AI democracy (it won’t surprise anyone that the short answer is No). Democracy and politics are rapidly transforming at the present moment; democracy is under threat from populist and far-right movements and various other actors, and there are widespread concerns about democratic backsliding around the world. In a reversal of trends in the 1990s and 200os, the number of true democracies in the world is shrinking …