Artificial Intelligence

The next speaker in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Zoltán Kmetty, whose focus is on difference between participant intentions and actual donations to data donation projects. There is a considerable willingness-to-donation gap, and methodological interventions are required to address this; the present project tested this during the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary election by using AI chatbots as data donation assistants.

The study employed a standard data donation approach, but in the data donation module briefing split the participant base into two groups: one received a static data export guide, and the other …

The next speaker in this session at the 5th Data Donation Symposium at the Weizenbaum-Institut in Berlin is Elisabeth Schmidbauer, whose interest is especially in the role of visual communication in recruiting data donations. This was tested by using eye tracking and a post-exposure walkthrough of the eye-tracking data, in an experimental setting.

Key theoretical backgrounds here include social presence, tested by including a picture of the researcher in recruitment materials; the impact of AI-generated images in the communication of studies, where (poorly designed) AI content might put off potential participants; and the question of how much potential participants engage …

The final speaker in this final paper session at the SEASON 2026 conference in Hamburg is Tereza Schambergerová. Her focus is on the impact of search engine optimisation (SEO) on AI overviews, but she begins by introducing the three key theories of political economy in the attention economy, gatekeeping as it applies to search engines, and the agenda-setting function of search engines like Google.

Her work draws on three datasets, with a focus on the Czech Republic: AI overview monitoring data from DataForSEO; search volume information from Ahrefs; and real click-through rate (CTR) data using the Google Search Console. In …

The next speaker at the SEASON 2026 conference in Hamburg is Hadeer ElMalah, whose focus is on both search engine optimisation (SEO) and generative engine optimisation (GEO). The algorithms that manage SEO on the search engine side have evolved greatly over the years, but are now further disrupted by AI-enhanced search processes. For marketers, the big question is now how to get brands cited in AI responses.

This requires a more advanced understanding of how generative AI engines choose what to cite. Very basically, retrieval-augmented generation relies on indexing documents; retrieving potentially relevant materials in response to a query; and …

And the final speakers in this session at the SEASON 2026 conference in Hamburg are Olof Sundin and Anna-Lena Godhe, whose interest is in the impact of generative AI on information-seeking and learning in Swedish schools. This is based on a series of focus groups with school teachers and librarians on how they experience the impact of generative AI on their own practices, with nine such focus groups already completed.

Searching for and evaluating information sources has played a crucial role in Swedish curricula for many decades; learning through projects has been a typical education style here, and this usually …

The next speakers at the SEASON 2026 conference in Hamburg are Joachim Griesbaum, Karen Malin Krüger, and Anna Mierzecka, whose interest is in information-literate human behaviour in AI interactions. Information literacy is defined as an individual’s ability to deal with information effectively and ethically; AI makes such engagement easier, but also partially takes over the process of selecting, evaluating, and presenting information – assessing the quality of that information, however, becomes a great deal more complicated.

By now, several AI literacy frameworks have already been proposed; how these relate to the core elements of information literacy is still poorly understood …

The post-lunch session at the SEASON 2026 conference in Hamburg starts with a paper by Thao Laavunen, who begins by noting the changing information sourcing practices from traditional business information sources via search engines to new digital and AI-enhanced sources today. This provides immediate access to substantial information quantities, new opportunities to identify markets and solve problems, and greater decision-making independence in business.

But greater access to information isn’t equal to better decision-making: the evaluation of the quality and relevance of sources is still critical, of course, and information overload, credibility uncertainties, algorithmic and commercial shaping of information provision, and …

And the final speakers in this session at the SEASON 2026 conference in Hamburg are Corinna Hertweck and Giovanni Astante, whose focus is on voting in Switzerland’s frequent referenda. How do Google’s and Bing’s AI Overviews perform in such contexts?

Referenda happen at all levels of Swiss democracy, with approximately four such votes (sometimes on several issues) happen per annum, and are surrounded by lively public debate. Information retrieved from AI Overviews might play a significant role in influencing voters’ decision-making processes; importantly, too, such votes are binary yes/no choices, which makes them different from conventional election decisions.

How often …

And the next speaker at the SEASON 2026 conference in Hamburg is Patrick Parschan, presenting a paper that some of of my colleagues have also had a little input into. The focus here is on what sources are present in AI search results on information relating to elections; the focus here is especially on a number of recent German state elections.

Google and Bing have of course recently rolled out AI-generated search summaries, which have displaced the conventional organic search results; how such summaries are produced remains largely opaque at this point. This produces new risks: search is already a …

The first paper session at the SEASON 2026 conference in Hamburg that I’m attending is on search engines and political information, and starts with Íris Damião, whose focus is on political bias in search engines and Large Language Models. Search engines have evolved a lot since they emerged in the 1990s, of course, but continue to be very widely trusted by their users – even when searching for some very sensitive information.

This is the case for instance when searching for election information, where people also search for information on election procedures, party programmes, and even whom to vote for …