Par­tic­i­pa­tion and diver­si­ty in tech­no­log­i­cal change

The cur­rent issue (Ger­man) of the Research Mon­i­tor focus­es on the norms of par­tic­i­pa­tion and diver­si­ty as sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nents of a demo­c­ra­t­ic pub­lic sphere. If we use inter­me­di­ary appli­ca­tions, we basi­cal­ly con­sume more news and infor­ma­tion than if we do not use them. Yet they do not reflect the diver­si­ty of con­tent that is fun­da­men­tal­ly avail­able online. To under­stand why this is so, some knowl­edge is need­ed. Only then is it pos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy the set points that enable a diverse demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­course and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of many.

“If we real­ly want to real­ize more diver­si­ty and par­tic­i­pa­tion, we must final­ly devote our­selves to the archi­tec­ture of inter­me­di­ate offer­ings. This means that we also have to deal with the devel­op­ment of algo­rith­mic sys­tems that select infor­ma­tion for us. This is nei­ther a niche topic, nor is it a pure­ly online phe­nom­e­non. It shapes our view of the world and the val­u­a­tion pat­terns accord­ing to which we act. To for­mu­late it bold­ly: What is made by usu­al­ly medi­um-aged, white, well-sit­u­at­ed men in the small cir­cle for suc­cess­ful enter­pris­es, repro­duces a com­plete­ly cer­tain and very lim­it­ed per­spec­tive on the world”, con­cludes Jaana Müller-Brehm, Pol­i­cy Advi­sor at iRights.Lab, from her work on the research monitor.

All issues are avail­able here (Ger­man).