by Annika Gödde | 20. September 2025
The group of female AI researchers will address the question of how human-AI teaming can evolve beneficially over time within organizations. This involves understanding the psychological and social dynamics involved in human-AI collaboration, such as trust, team cohesion, and shared mental models. We will explore how these dynamics change over time and how they can be predicted and explored through research design choices.
We will use scenario techniques to work on potential future scenarios of human-AI teaming in the workplace. This will involve analyzing the temporal dynamics of AI implementation in work teams, focusing on the evolution of trust, team cohesion, and shared mental models. We will also discuss normatively desirable and potentially conceivable visions of human-AI teaming in the future.
by Annika Gödde | 17. June 2025
The working group will explore how workers in the IT industry are involved in shaping public life. In an increasingly datafied society, we ask how this industry engages in political decision making, how this political economy translates into IT products, and how both are then materialized in the lives of individuals and communities.
We draw on a critical strand in communication research that qualitatively examines backstage practices and relations that translate into the content offered on the screen and its public meanings, viewing IT executives and workers as culture producers. Studying them is of crucial importance, as they now develop and maintain key digital infrastructures on which most other social domains depend, and are in many polities explicitly involved in politics.
We hope this exploration will lead to joint publications and provide members with a multi-national understanding of this topic as we discuss it with students and the broader public.
by Annika Gödde | 16. June 2025
This working group investigates the complex debates on regulatory frameworks for social media platforms in Germany, the United States, and Brazil. We look, in particular, at discourses on the challenges of regulating online speech in a way that respects democratic values, taking into account cultural-specific sensitivities.
Germany’s NetzDG reflects an European regulatory model which has raised concerns about ‘overblocking’, contrasting with the United States’ regulatory model based on Section 230 CDA, which champions platform autonomy and freedom of speech. In Brazil, the debate around the Marco Civil da Internet and current social media disputes underscore unique regulatory challenges in Latin America, where recent violent events have intensified calls for platform accountability.
by Annika Gödde | 23. April 2025
As social media platforms increasingly take on roles and responsibilities traditionally associated with nation states, new frameworks to evaluate their fragility must be developed. Using The Fund For Peace’s Fragile State Index as a model, Haythornthwaite, Mai & Gruzd (2024) articulated the Social Media Fragility Indicators, a set of indicators to measure and evaluate the fragility of social media platforms. Building on this, the working group will discuss and refine the proposed indicators. The overarching goal is to develop a robust framework that can provide prescient insights into the long-term viability of platforms, inform strategic interventions, and highlight cross-platform issues.
To advance this work, the working group will convene a set of international experts from diverse fields to evaluate the sources of social media fragility, refine the initial set of indicators of social media fragility, and devise measures to assess the fragility of social media platforms based on these indicators.
by Annika Gödde | 22. April 2025
This working group explores how academic platforms like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and Medium shape the visibility of marginalized scholars – particularly women and non-binary individuals from the Global South. While these platforms promise greater access and engagement, they often reinforce existing inequalities through algorithmic bias, competitive scoring systems, and limited accessibility. Their goal is to understand how these digital environments impact the scholarly presence of underrepresented voices and to develop strategies that make academic platforms more inclusive. The project includes a user-focused survey and interviews, drawing from feminist theory and labor studies to evaluate the technical and social aspects of platform design.
