February 2025 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

REMINDER - deadline 20 February: Survey on Researchers' use of social media and algorithmic data
by Beatrice Cannelli 17 Feb '25

17 Feb '25

Dear list members, We would be very grateful if you could spare the time to participate in our survey on “Researchers' use of social media and algorithmic data”. The survey is part of the research and scoping phase of the Algorithmic Archive Project, which aims to undertake the research necessary to support the Bodleian Libraries in developing a strategy for archiving web-based data, including social media data and algorithms. The aim of this survey is to explore how researchers work with social media and algorithmic data, mapping current research practices and methodologies used to collect, analyse and manage the data. This includes projects where social media and algorithmic data are used alongside other sources of evidence. Please follow this link to complete the survey: https://forms.office.com/e/wVs2QUARRE Completing the survey will take approximately 10 minutes and it will remain open until 20 February 2025. Please share this with your colleagues or anyone else who may be interested in participating. Thank you in advance for your contribution. Kind regards, Beatrice On behalf of the Algorithmic Archive project ------- Dr Beatrice Cannelli Curatorial and Policy Research Officer | Algorithmic Archive Project Bodleain Libraries Wenston Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX13BG Email: beatrice.cannelli(a)bodleian.ox.ac.uk

1 0

19th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering (TASE 2025): Last Mile for Submissions
by Announce 17 Feb '25

17 Feb '25

*** Last Mile for Submissions *** 19th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering (TASE 2025) July 14-16, 2025, 5* St. Raphael Resort and Marina, Limassol, Cyprus https://cyprusconferences.org/tase2025/ (*** Proceedings to be published by Springer in LNCS ***) OVERVIEW TASE 2025 aims to bring together researchers and developers from academia and industry with interest in the theoretical aspects of software engineering. Modern society is increasingly dependent on software systems that are becoming larger and more complex. This poses new challenges to current software engineering methodologies that need to be enhanced using modern results from theoretical computer science. We invite submission of research papers on topics covering all theoretical aspects of software engineering, including those describing applications of theoretical computer science in industrial applications and software engineering methodologies. TOPICS OF INTEREST Authors are invited to submit high quality technical papers describing original and unpublished work in all theoretical aspects of software engineering. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Software engineering, including: ■ Software processes and workflows ■ Software architectures and design ■ Software product lines ■ Requirements engineering ■ Model-driven software engineering ■ Software testing and quality assurance ■ Software safety, security and reliability ■ Reverse engineering and software maintenance ■ Component-based software engineering ■ Feature-oriented programming ■ Program synthesis ■ Use of AI and large language models in software engineering Formal methods and theoretical computer science, including: ■ Deductive verification ■ Model checking ■ Theorem proving, decision procedures, SAT and SMT ■ Specification languages ■ Program logics and calculi ■ Formal languages and automata theory ■ Run-time verification and monitoring ■ Integration of formal methods ■ Formal methods for AI systems, and vice versa Programming language design and technology, including: ■ Formal semantics ■ Abstract interpretation and program analysis ■ Language paradigms, including object-oriented, functional, declarative, etc. ■ Type systems and behavioral typing ■ Compiler design ■ Domain-specific languages Tools and application areas, including: ■ Software tools putting theory into practice ■ Cyber-physical, embedded, and real-time systems ■ Distributed and concurrent systems ■ Semantic web and web services ■ Service-oriented programming and cloud computing ■ Quantum circuits and programs ■ Cryptographic algorithms SUBMISSION Submissions to the conference must not have been published or be concurrently considered for publication elsewhere. All submissions will be judged on the basis of originality, contribution to the field, technical and presentation quality, and relevance to the conference. The proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Papers should be written in English and should not exceed 16 pages (excluding bibliography) for long papers and 6 pages (excluding bibliography) for short papers in LNCS format. Submissions should be made through the TASE 2025 submission page, handled by the Easy Chair conference management system. Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tase2025 The authors of a selected subset of accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers to a special issue in the journal Science of Computer Programming (https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/science-of-computer-programming) IMPORTANT DATES ■ Abstract Submission: Mar 1, 2025 (AoE) ■ Paper Submission: Mar 8, 2025 (AoE) ■ Author Notification: April 5, 2025 (AoE) ■ Camera-ready Versions and Author Registration: May 1, 2025 (AoE) ORGANISATION General Chair ■ George A. Papadopoulos, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Program Chairs ■ Philipp Rümmer, University of Regensburg, Germany ■ Zhilin Wu, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

1 0

CFP 'Data Care: A Humanities and Social Sciences Approach to Debiasing Large Language Models'
by Toija Cinque 16 Feb '25

16 Feb '25

Apologies for any cross-posting. …………………………………………………………. Dear Colleagues, This is a call for papers for a special issue of Information, Communication and Society ‘Data Care: A Humanities and Social Sciences Approach to Debiasing Large Language Models’ Large Language Models (LLMs) are AI systems trained on vast datasets to generate, understand, and process human language and expression, enabling applications like chatbots, translation, and content creation. Much research on LLMs is led by computer scientists focused on debiasing data to build fairer models, while humanities and social science scholars remain underrepresented in shaping AI’s decision-making processes. Computational research often addresses ‘data loss’ and ‘data deficiencies’ through data-centric AI approaches, whereas scholars from media studies, anthropology, and political science for instance take a social-centric approach to critique AI’s role in reinforcing historical inequalities through data extraction and algorithmic governance. These critiques, however, while important, rarely translate into co-constructive decision-making to build datasets that are transparent, equitable, and representative of the Majority World. Emergent research from the Global South highlights AI’s potential to challenge traditional gatekeepers, oppressive regimes, and patriarchal norms, fostering a more hopeful perspective on LLM-powered innovations. The rise of diverse LLMs—such as OpenAI’s GPT (USA), DeepSeek, Qwen (China), Mistral (France), and Matilda (Australia)—demands a cross-cultural approach to AI development. These models reflect different linguistic, ethical, and socio-political contexts, underscoring the need for a humanities and social sciences analysis around what constitutes localized training data, multilingual adaptability, and culturally aware governance that moves beyond resistance toward rational optimism. This special issue seeks to engage humanities and social science scholars committed to improving the decision-making of AI by focusing on debiasing strategies around notions of authenticity, provenance, representation, and inclusion in data capture and curation. Centred on the concept of Data Care, it promotes ethical, inclusive, and community-driven data ecosystems guided by the CARE principles: Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics. Moving beyond critique, this issue fosters interdisciplinary dialogue on equitable AI development and invites contributions on replicable strategies to debias and diversify LLMs from a cross-cultural perspective. Themes and Topics This special issue seeks papers that move beyond critique to actively shape the development of Large Language Models (LLMs), through a humanities and social sciences led approach to debiasing and diversification. Contributions can take theoretical, empirical, or cross-cultural approaches, particularly from Global South and Indigenous contexts. The focus can be on: * Creative Methods--case studies, comparative, and experimental methodologies for inclusive dataset training, curation, annotation, and governance. * Equitable and Representative Training Data--strategies for integrating cultural, linguistic, and epistemic diversity in LLMs, addressing biases in dataset construction. * Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion--analyses of geopolitical and corporate-driven data exclusions, as well as creative activist interventions that challenge algorithmic control, and strives to build new forms of inclusive standards. * ‘Rational optimism’ Approaches--collaborative approaches between humanities scholars, social scientists, and computer scientists to shape AI from within, working with stakeholders on the ground striving to optimize AI innovations and address chronic data deficits to build sustainable solutions. * Operationalizing the CARE Principles--theoretical and empirical research on embedding Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics into LLM development. We invite interdisciplinary and cross-cultural comparative papers that propose actionable pathways for fairer, more culturally responsive AI systems. Submission Guidelines We invite contributions from humanities and social sciences scholars including but not limited to media and communications studies, anthropology, historians, cultural studies, STS, AI ethics, political sciences, and design. We particularly encourage submissions from researchers and practitioners based in the Global South. Deadlines & Key Dates: * EXTENDED ABSTRACT Submission Deadline: Friday 28 March 2025 Please send 1000-1200 words (including references) to llmdatacare(a)gmail.com<mailto:llmdatacare@gmail.com> Include the name(s) of the author(s); The affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s); The e-mail address, and telephone number(s) of the corresponding author: * NOTIFICATION of Accepted Abstracts to develop as full papers: Monday 14 April 2025 * FULL PAPER DRAFT Submission: Friday 2 May 2025 * ACCEPTED Papers are invited to attend a Workshop and co-read each other’s paper for feedback: Wednesday 11 June 2025, University of Utrecht and hybrid. * REVISION Deadline: 26 November 2025 * PUBLICATION Date: 2026 All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process. The editorial team of Information, Communication & Society (ICS) has expressed interest in a full Special Issue proposal comprising approximately ten articles. We invite scholars to contribute their work for consideration, with the potential for inclusion in the proposed issue, pending final approval from the journal For inquiries, please contact Toija Cinque llmdatacare(a)gmail.com<mailto:llmdatacare@gmail.com> We look forward to your contributions to this important conversation on ensuring AI systems reflect and serve diverse cultural and creative perspectives! Guest Editors Payal Arora, Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures, Utrecht University p.arora(a)uu.nl<mailto:p.arora@uu.nl> Toija Cinque, Associate Professor, Communications (Digital Media), Deakin University toija.cinque(a)deakin.edu.au<mailto:toija.cinque@deakin.edu.au> Baohua Zhou, Professor and Associate Dean Director of the New Media Communication Program, Founding Director of Computational and AI Communication Research Center, Fudan University zhoubaohua(a)yeah.net<mailto:zhoubaohua@yeah.net> Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error or virus free.

1 0

AoIR2025 Submissions deadline is in two weeks - 1 March 2025
by AoIR Association Coordinator 16 Feb '25

16 Feb '25

This is a reminder that the deadline to make submissions for #AoIR2025 Ruptures is just over two weeks away: 1 March 2025, 23:59 UTC. If you are unsure what time this is where you are, please check here. <https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=AoIR2024+Submissi…> In the meantime, submissions for #AoIR2025 are already being uploaded daily. We would greatly appreciate your help with the review process, even if you are unable to submit a proposal this year. As ever, our goal is to create a broad, engaging, and diverse selection of conference presentations that reflect the breadth of our research community, and we can only do that with engaged and thoughtful reviewers. If you are submitting to the conference this year, please also volunteer to review. More details on submitting and reviewing below, but the deadline of Saturday, 1 March 2025 is the same for both! - - - *Submitting* We’re very excited to be making two major innovations this year. This first is that *we are opening space for other languages than English! *For the first time ever, we will accept a limited number of proposals to be presented in Portuguese or Spanish (and that will have simultaneous translation to English). These proposals, however, must be submitted in English for the review process. This is restricted to papers, panels, roundtables and fishbowls. As part of the submission process, you will be asked if you would like to present in Portuguese or Spanish.* If your proposal is a panel, roundtable or fishbowl with multiple languages, you must choose only one language for the entire group. The choice you make at this stage will be binding. *As there will be fewer spots for these presentations--because of the need to provide simultaneous translation--you may be accepted but asked to present in English. The second innovation is the introduction of a* tiered system for conference registration fees.* The final fees will be announced in due course, but we are striving to leave last year’s fees unchanged, while offering seriously discounted rates for participants based in the Global South. Without committing to a concrete number right now, the options we are considering are around US$50 for early-bird members, which would bring AoIR in line with similar conferences in Brazil. We mention this now to encourage submissions from people who might be discouraged from even trying to come to the conference based on previous years’ fees. For this year’s conference we are excited to be continuing with our hybrid options, while learning from the experience of Sheffield. To this end, we shall be accepting proposals for papers to be presented remotely and we will be live streaming a number of the sessions, allowing for remote participation in the conference. We shall be limiting the number of remote presentations to one or two per paper panel, and only for some of the panels per session. Finally, two of our core events will continue to run in both face-to-face and online versions: the Doctoral Colloquium and the Early Career Researcher (ECR) event. Submissions <https://aoir.org/aoir2025/aoir2025subtypes/> for both modes of the Doctoral Colloquium are open; as with our other preconferences, calls for participation in both modes of the ECR event will be distributed shortly after conference acceptance notifications. We also plan to provide online access for all AoIR members to our larger events (keynote, plenaries, and Annual General Meeting). *Submission to AoIR 2025: Ruptures* The 2025 conference welcomes contributions that address the broad theme of Ruptures. To re-familiarize yourself with the call for proposals and types of submissions solicited, please see here: https://aoir.org/aoir2025/aoir2025subtypes/ When submitting, please take the time to read the submission categories and topics carefully; this helps us match your submission to a suitable reviewer. To learn more about how submissions are reviewed, please see here: https://aoir.org/sub_review_info_aoir/ *In the interest of diversity and collegiality, each conference participant is limited to presenting a maximum of two papers (either as standalone papers or as parts of a panel or one of each; fishbowls, experimental sessions and roundtables are not counted against your maximum of two presentations). You can be a co-author on additional papers, but you must not be the scheduled presenter of these papers.* Please email any questions about the submissions process to AoIRConfChair(a)aoir.org. Click here to go to the submission site: https://www.conftool.org/aoir2025 We look forward to your proposals and to a vibrant and stimulating conference in Niterói! - - - *Reviewing* Please double check that you have indicated that you have volunteered to review (or change that to a no if you cannot review this year). Based on feedback from previous conferences we have revised our list of reviewer expertise topics. Please update your topics to help us match proposal submissions to reviewer interests, instructions on how to do this are here: https://aoir.org/aoir_reviewer_instructions/ To learn more about how submissions are reviewed, please see here: https://aoir.org/sub_review_info_aoir/. On behalf of AoIR, we thank you for your time, attention, and contribution to the AoIR conference. If you do not have the time to be a reviewer this year, no problem. You can reply to AoIRConfChair(a)aoir.org and we will remove your reviewer status from your profile. Please login and update your reviewer expertise topics by Saturday, 1 March 2025 at the very latest. If you have any questions or any difficulties updating your information, please let us know. Sincerely, AoIR2025 Program Chair

1 0

Archiving threatened, erased, or damaged LGBTQI+ websites
by Rachel Saunders 15 Feb '25

15 Feb '25

Hi everyone, In light of the recent US government decision to erase trans and queer information from governmental websites I have built a database to store links to the sites and any archived versions of them to prevent their complete erasure. If you or anyone you know would like to contribute the form is here: https://airtable.com/appOZspc5PMlEvmb4/pagLwaeMpZb1BeyYv/form If you would like to access the database for your work the link is here: https://airtable.com/appOZspc5PMlEvmb4/shr2mdqITLy5x8W3m This work is completely anonymous and no personal details are required to be involved. If you have any questions please reply or email me at Rachel.Saunders(a)nottingham.ac.uk. Please share this widely, as it is vital we store this information before it is erased forever. Cheers, Rachel Saunders University of Nottingham

1 0

Faculty Job Alert! Loretta Rogers Research Chair in Cybersecurity Analytics at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada
by Anatoliy Gruzd 15 Feb '25

15 Feb '25

The School of Information Technology Management at Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU) Ted Rogers School of Management is seeking a distinguished scholar for the Loretta Rogers Research Chair in Cybersecurity Analytics. This prestigious position, beginning July 1, 2025, offers a unique opportunity to lead groundbreaking research at the intersection of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and analytics. The Chair will be appointed as a tenured Associate Professor for a renewable five-year term. Located in downtown Toronto, one of the world’s most diverse and innovative cities, TMU provides a vibrant research environment committed to excellence, equity, and inclusion. We invite applications from outstanding scholars who can drive meaningful advancements in cybersecurity analytics while mentoring future leaders in the field. Apply by March 15, 2025 to be part of this transformative opportunity. Learn more & apply: https://hr.cf.torontomu.ca/ams/faculty/preview.cfm?posting_id=554861

1 0

Influencer Labour Webinar Series + Politicisation of Influencers Workshop at Utrecht University
by Annabell, T. (Taylor) 14 Feb '25

14 Feb '25

Dear AoIR Community, Join us in our webinar series to discuss the cultural, economic, and legal dimensions of content creation as a form of labour or at a workshop to discuss the politicisation of influencers. We are hosting four webinars to launch The Hashtag Hustle: Law and Policy Perspectives on Working in the Influencer Economy (edited by Christian Fieseler, Catalina Goanta, Isabelle Wildhaber and me, Taylor Annabell) with contributing authors. Webinar 1, 20 February 2025, 15:00 CET, featuring Laura Aade and her chapter on platform discretion in content moderation on professional Twitch streamers, with Colten Meisner as a discussant; Malcolm Katrak and Shardool Kulkarni and their chapter on the regulation of influencer labour in India with Anilesh Kumar as discussant. Webinar 2, 26 February 2025, 10:00 CET, featuring Ziying Meng and her chapter on cross-platform labour across Chinese and US-based platforms, with Qian Huang as a discussant; Tjaša Petročnik and her chapter assessing EU regulatory frameworks in the context of creator labour on YouTube, with Rachel Griffin as a discussant. Webinar 3, 26 February 2025, 15:00 CET, featuring Lucia Bainotti and her chapter on the composite careers of creators, with Tom Divon as a discussant; Claire Marzo and her chapter comparing labour law and social protection of influencers in France and the United Kingdom, with Archer Buissink as a discussant. Webinar 4, 6 March 2025, 15:00 CET with the editorial team Christian Fieseler, Catalina Goanta, Isabelle Wildhaber and Taylor Annabell discussing the themes of the book. Register the webinars: https://forms.office.com/e/aW9WYQrh8Q All chapters available open access: https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollbook-oa/book/9781035332816/9781035332816.… Together with Utrecht University’s Governing the Digital Society and the HUMANads project, we are hosting a workshop on the politicisation of influencers on 5 March 2025. Just as brands have turned to influencer marketing to reach consumers, governments, politicians, political parties, and organisations increasingly engage influencers for promotional purposes. Such collaborations between influencers and political actors represent an intersection of the personal, commercial, and political, raising questions for influencers as commercial actors and public figures, audiences as followers and citizens, and society at large. This workshop opens with presentations by Johanna Arnesson (Umeå Universitet) and Hanna Reinikainen (University of Helsinki) and is followed by a panel discussion on the role of political influencers in political discussion and outcomes during elections with Romanian YouTube and Twitch streamer, Silviu Istrate. Join us at Utrecht University or online, 5 March 14:00-16:00 CET. Register: https://www.uu.nl/en/events/politicisation-of-influencers-workshop All the best, Taylor Dr Taylor Annabell | Postdoc Researcher | Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance | Utrecht University| t.annabell(a)uu.nl

1 0

Cfp: Digital Methods Summer School - Univ. Amsterdam
by rogers＠govcom.org 14 Feb '25

14 Feb '25

Digital Methods Summer School and Data Sprint 2025 Media Studies, University of Amsterdam 30 June - 11 July 2025 Call for Participation The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is holding its annual Summer School on 'Social media at a crossroads, and the sensitivity of AI platforms'. The format is that of a (social media and web) data sprint, with training tutorials as well as hands-on work for telling stories with data. There is also a programme of keynote speakers. It is intended for advanced Master's students, PhD candidates and motivated scholars who would like to work on (and complete) a digital methods project in an intensive workshop setting. This year’s Digital Methods Summer School has two related themes. The first is ‘social media at a crossroads’ and the second the ‘sensitivity of AI platforms’; they are related given that mainstream social media seem to have lost their normative compass while AI platforms strive to improve theirs through enhanced content moderation. AI platforms are now occasionally called ‘oversensitive’, however. This oversensitivity charge is reminiscent of attacks on Dorsey’s Twitter and other social media platforms with active content moderation. How to consider the rising critique of the oversensitivity of AI platform moderation in light of the turn to free-for-all expression on social media? The Summer School takes up this larger question, but first breaks it down into the two individual areas of study. Social media at a crossroads Does the current crisis in social media seem novel? Fake news, data breaches, trolling, neo-reactionary takeovers and other style shifts and infrastructural setbacks have long overtaken the participatory culture, platform cooperativism, produsage, neo-pluralistic potentials and other more buoyant notions from past digital cultures. But when Meta announced in January 2025 it was re-orienting its content moderation policies to filter only the most egregious violations of its standards and also end its fact checking program, it perhaps marked a breaking point with respect to any prospective redemption of social media. Dressed up in masculine vitalism and aesthetics, Meta’s announcements follow on from the trenchant criticism directed at X/Twitter. The EU has found it in breach of its regulations by using ‘dark patterns’ in advertising and blocking researcher data access, and a recent Berkeley study found that since Musk’s takeover hate speech rose by 50%. And yet, Meta headily pointed to X’s content moderation style as its own guide! Will Instagram and other social media platforms follow X’s slide, empirical questions we would like to explore through auditing and other projects at the Summer School. The sensitivity of AI platforms The second theme is the so-called sensitivity of AI guardrails which refer to the strength level of the moderation and filtering built into AI platforms. AI chatbots, trained to be 3H’d (helpful, honest, and harmless) can be sycophantic and overly polite. At the same time these platforms, while racing for new performance levels, continue to build content moderation APIs and other in-built measures to filter out a variety of harmful and offensive content. The filtering work may be easier to perform (compared to social media platforms) given that it’s sentence completions rather than user posts that are affected. Users are not cancelled, their posts are not shadow banned. (But they do experience refusals to complete prompts.) Will the moderation backlash experienced by social media platforms come to AI platforms? How to attune AI platforms to the critique? Content moderation research continues to find porous guardrails on AI platforms. While Llama appears to be highly sensitive, Falcon seems to be more permissive, for example. Will AI platforms follow social media and position themselves on the free speech spectrum? Given the challenges of universal moderation speech norms, will they turn to personalisation as the answer? These and similar questions about the state of content moderation online motivate the Summer School. Applications: Key Dates There are rolling admissions, and applications are now being accepted. To apply please send a letter of motivation, your CV, a headshot photo, 100-word bio as well as a copy of your passport (details page only) to summerschool [at] digitalmethods.net. Notifications of acceptance are sent 1-2 weeks after application. Final deadline for applications is 19 May 2024. The full program and schedule of the Summer School are available on or about 27 May 2025. Tuition Fees The fee for the Digital Methods Winter School 2025 is EUR 895, and upon completion all participants receive certificates of completion or transcripts (worth 6 ECTS). Full call for participation and all additional information is here: https://www.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2025 Prof. Richard Rogers Media Studies University of Amsterdam

1 0

Call for papers - Amsterdam Trust Summit
by Balazs Bodo 14 Feb '25

14 Feb '25

Apologies for cross-posting, i hope this might be interesting for this group! Call for Papers – Amsterdam Trust Summit 2025 Don’t miss the chance to contribute to our annual Amsterdam Trust Summit, hosted by the Trust in the Digital Society Research Priority Area, on August 28–29, 2025! In recent years trust has become one of the central concepts in the digital society. On the one hand, the trustworthiness of our information infrastructures, such as platforms, AI, encrypted communications emerged as a central concern. On the other hand, trust relations in the digital society, such as trust in expertise, science, news, or public institutions have been fundamentally disrupted. We are at a critical juncture, where these two challenges meet. There is no rightly vested trust in the digital society without trustworthy information-communication technologies. The Amsterdam Trust Summit invites researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and activists to come together and start building a comprehensive account of the trust dynamics in the digital society. Contributions are welcome for various tracks: - Theories of trust and distrust in the digital society - Trust dynamics around emerging technologies - Individual trusting behaviors and their impacts - Trustworthiness safeguards of socio-technical infrastructures - Narratives of trust and distrust in popular culture - Innovative methods for studying trust in the information age Submit your work and learn more here: https://digitaltrust.uva.nl/amsterdam-trust-summit-2025/call-for-papers-ats… Deadline for submissions: February 28, 2025 Trust is the latest shared societal resource to be disrupted by digital innovation on a global scale. We see a growing distrust in institutions, practices, professions which were highly trusted before. More and more people have less confidence than before in journalism, science, vaccines, schools and universities, otherwise fair and reliable public institutions. Political polarization creates tensions in interpersonal trust relations, and sometimes tear friendships, and even families apart. While skepticism and distrust can also be understood as liberal democratic virtues, online they are all too often subject to ‘weaponization’ at the hands of trolls, online influencers, lying politicians and sock puppet accounts connected to authoritarian state sponsored disinformation campaigns. In online environments, where outrage often leads to higher levels of 'engagement', these dynamics feed into new ‘coalitions of distrust’ forming across and between different groups united by their shared antagonism of 'the mainstream'. On the other end of the spectrum, we also see an increase of ‘overconfidence’ in untrustworthy actors. Throughout history, people have often placed trust in the wrong hands, but what distinguishes the present is the scale at which this occurs online, where accountability is frequently lacking. The rise of the sharing economy has made it common to trust strangers with our homes, cars, and personal belongings, often without fully considering the risks involved. Similarly, the growing presence of generative AI has led many to trust the output of these systems without hesitation in their daily lives. Trust is fluid, and there are just too many opportunities for it to flow into the wrong places: the untrustworthy seem to be increasingly trusted, while the trustworthy aren’t. In each case we may be facing a slightly different formulation of the same fundamental questions. First: what makes these new digital innovations (un)trustworthy? What mix of regulation, transparency, accountability, oversights, technical design, business models will provide the greatest confidence that our new digital infrastructures can deliver on their promises, while keeping the best interest of their users and of the society in mind? Second, how does digital innovation shape trust in the digital society? What are the dynamics that shape trust relations vis-à-vis other people, institutions, technologies, etc.? How do the different components of trust change and transform due to digitization: the circumstances of the one who trusts, the characteristics of the one to be trusted, the environment in which trust emerges (or not). Third, what are the (unintended) consequences of the disruption of trust relations and the emergence of these new trust mediators to individuals, organizations, and society more broadly? And what may be effective pathways to, on the one hand, leverage the benefits of some of these developments while, on the other hand, addressing the risks and the issues that they bring? -------------------------- Balazs Bodo Professor of Information Law and Policy, with special emphasis on Technology Governance Institute for Information Law <https://www.ivir.nl/> Program Director Advanced LLM in Technology Governance <https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/advanced-masters/technology-governance/tec…> University of Amsterdam *Latest publications <https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/b/o/b.bodo/b.bodo.html>:* Bodó, B., & Weigl, L. (in press). The frameworks of trust and trustlessness around algorithmic control technologies: A lost sense of community <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4861198>. In J. Goossens, & E. Keymolen (Eds.), Public Governance and Emerging Technologies: Values, Trust, and Compliance by Design

1 0

The Future of (Digital) Democracy
by Christian Fuchs 14 Feb '25

14 Feb '25

Dear colleagues, INNOVADE is a three year long Horizon Europe research project that started in January 2025. It wants to better understand and improve (digital) democracy, which is an urgent task. More information is available here: https://innovade-democracy.eu/ If you are interested to obtain updates about the project and/or to participate in activities that the project plans, you can indicate your interest here: https://innovade-democracy.eu/form/stakeholder-mapping Best regards, Christian Fuchs on behalf of the INNOVADE project

1 0