The research group Digital Communication and Transformation (digicat) is currently looking for student and research assistants to support the chair in research and teaching. There is the possibility to apply for a general support position or a position with a technical focus. Please see the job postings for details.

The positions are for 6-9 hours per week (negotiable) and should be filled as soon as possible. The deadline for the applications is the 11th August (WHK) and the 14th August 2022 (SHK). Applications received earlier will be considered before the application deadline.

Please send your application with the usual documents exclusively by e-mail as a single PDF file, quoting the reference number, to Hilka Roseneit.

Job posting for SHK position

Job posting for WHK position 

For the launch of the PREVENT project the official project website has been published: prevent.social-media-analytics.org

In addition to general information about the project, news and background information will be published on the website. The latest blog post deals with the problem of digital disinformation campaigns and explains how PREVENT aims to contribute to prevention by developing a training approach.

The PREVENT project “Training Approach for Teaching Individual, Coordinated and Automated Measures to Prevent Digital Disinformation Campaigns" aims to support authorities and organisations with security tasks in implementing preventive measures against digital disinformation campaigns through technology and recommendations from an ethical and legal perspective. 

Prof. Stieglitz's chair receives funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for a new project titled "PREVENT - Training Approach for Teaching Individual, Coordinated and Automated Measures to Prevent Digital Disinformation Campaigns".

With digital disinformation campaigns, international actors try to undermine democratic debate, exacerbate social polarisation and improve their own image during crises. Through the coordinated spread of disinformation - often using social bots - these actors are able to create an artificial distortion of opinion on social media.

PREVENT aims to support authorities and organisations with security tasks in implementing preventive measures against digital disinformation campaigns through technology and recommendations from an ethical and legal perspective.

Prof. Stieglitz coordinates the project, which also involves Prof. Dr. Milad Mirbabaie  (University of Paderborn), Prof. Dr. Dr. Frauke Rostalski  (University of Cologne), PD Dr. Jessica Heesen and Dr. Wulf Loh from the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (University of Tübingen) and Christoph Fuchss of the Berlin software company Virtimo AG.  The project partners are experts in digital crisis communication, law, media ethics, and software development respectively.

The project will run for 3 years and is funded by the BMBF with a total of 1.6 million euros.

Link to the press release of the UDE

Clip from WDR Duisburg - Lokalzeit (26/01/2022)

Two of our papers were nominated for best paper awards at the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Science (HICSS). The winners will be announced in early January during the conference.

In the minitrack "Social Shopping: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", our paper titled "Oiling The 'tireless Selling-Machine' - Exploring Requirements for the Deployment of Social Bots in Social Commerce" by Felix Brünker, Julian Marx, Milad Mirbabaie and Stefan Stieglitz was nominated.

In the minitrack "AI and the Future of Work", our paper titled "Ethics Guidelines for Using AI-Based Algorithms in Recruiting: Learnings from a Systematic Literature Review" by Audrey Luther, Ina Rentemeister, Lennart Hofeditz, Milad Mirbabaie and Riccarda Mauth. We are especially happy about this recognition for the students from the Komedia Master program involved in this paper. 

Reunion at the Duisburg Campus! The courses for the winter term 2021/2022 at the University of Duisburg-Essen start at the beginning of October. Information on the courses of the chair can be found here on the website and on the Moodle platform.

The courses for the winter term 2021/2022 at the University of Duisburg-Essen start at the beginning of October. Information on the courses of the chair can be found here on the website and on the Moodle platform.

This semester we are offering face-to-face courses again. You can find specific information on the individual courses on the respective Moodle page. The UDE has developed a list of measures for face-to-face teaching in order to create a safe learning environment. We ask all students to familiarise themselves with the measures and to prepare for the courses accordingly. We are looking forward to seeing you (again) at Campus Duisburg!

Information sheet with safety measures for students

Overview of our courses in the winter semester

In the recently started, DFG-funded research project, the chair of Prof. Stieglitz in collaboration with Prof. Adriana da Rosa Amaral and researchers from the University Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos investigate the social media communication on the vaccination campaign in Brazil.

In the DFG-funded research project "Spreading the Antidote - The Framing of COVID-19 Vaccination Campaigns in the Brazilian Social Media Sphere (SMAVAC)", the chair of Prof. Stieglitz in cooperation with Prof. Adriana da Rosa Amaral and researchers from the University Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos investigate the social media communication on the vaccination campaign in Brazil.

The aim of the research project is to identify misleading information circulating on social media and how the communication of facts about the Covid-19 vaccination campaign to the Brazilian population can be improved.
As part of the project, the research team will analyze social media data from Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube to uncover misinformation, rumors, and conspiracy theories during the "Covid-19 infodemic" in Brazil. 
The researchers rely on an innovative combination of social media analytics methods and qualitative analysis to uncover harmful narratives and frames and identify opinion leaders. In addition to scientific research, the group's main goal is to develop concrete recommendations and strategies for Brazilian health institutions to make them more resilient for potential future health crises.

Read more about the DFG Focus Funding

Read more about the project and the project partners here

Prof. Stieglitz's chair has been renamed "Digital Communication and Transformation" (digicat). With the new name comes a new logo and a new link to this website.

By renaming, we do justice to our research in the field of digital transformation in our name as well and modernize our external appearance. In the course of this, the link to this website has changed to: https://www.uni-due.de/digicat/index_en.php. An automatic redirect from the previous page to the new one has been set up. We would be pleased if linking pages would update the link accordingly. For a possible integration of the logo we can share the file upon request.

Prof. Stieglitz is chairing a track on Social Media Analytics at this year’s “International Conference on Intelligent Technologies and Applications” (INTAP ‘21) together with Prof. Majchrzak and Prof. Abouzeid from the University of Agder in Norway.

The track chairs call for submissions on social media analytics, such as text mining, opinion mining, and sentiment analysis. Both short and completed research Papers can be submitted until 18th May. The conference will take place between 11th and 13th October in Grimstad, Norway. More information on the call for papers of the INTAP ‘21 can be accessed here. 

The chair of Prof. Stieglitz will receive funding for a new project called “Science communication during pandemics: The role of public engagement in social media discussions'' from a grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

In the project, we’ll investigate the distribution of and reactions to science-related information on social media, the role of emotions in science communication, and the impact of seemingly scientific information by feigned experts. Amongst others, it will answer what kind of comments and reactions social media science communication yields, how emotional comments and reactions change the effects of evidence-based science communication and to what extent lay-people can read the cues and distinguish between real and feigned experts.

The project will be conducted in cooperation with Prof. Nicole Krämer (University Duisburg-Essen) and Prof. Monika Taddiken (Technical University Braunschweig) and  will run for three years.

Further information on the research group of Prof. Krämer

Further information on the resarch group of Prof. Taddiken

Together with Prof. Dr. Matthias Knoll (University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt) Prof. Stieglitz is in charge of the February 2022 issue of HMD - Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik on the topic of Augmented & Virtual Reality.
 
For this issue we are looking for contributions that deal with the two topics from a scientific and practical perspective. Possible questions to be addressed in the issue are the interaction between hardware and software, the benefit and the generation of immersion or the meaning and production of security. The analysis and identification of possible business models can be discussed as well as the concrete identification of applications or the design of those. The aim is to present the basics of VR and AR as well as the state of the art in research and to systematise possible areas of application under consideration of chances and risks in order to classify them in the overall context.
 
Prof. Stieglitz calls for the submission of articles on these topics. A concept can be submitted before the complete article. The deadline here is 01.05.2021. Further information can be found in the linked PDF file.

More information on the call for papers

More information on the HMD journal

The PROCO chair is involved in the project called "Strategy and Technology Development for the Cross-Media Creation of a Cyber Situation Picture and Actor-Specific Communication of Cyber Warnings" (CYWARN), which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with 2 million Euros. The chair is involved with 500,000 Euros and is developing a communication concept including a dashboard for and with authorities to identify and close IT security gaps more quickly. For this purpose, the expertise in the analysis of social media data will be used.

The project investigates how Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) can support the analysis and communication of the Germany-wide cyber situation during cyber attacks with new strategies and technologies. With increasing digitisation, the danger of cyber attacks, for example on critical infrastructure, is also increasing. In such cases, CERTs are the central point of contact for taking action in the event of IT security incidents. Since the information situation is often confusing in the case of attacks, the project aims to develop strategies and measures to identify, analyse and communicate cyber threats.

The project is led by Prof. Dr. Christian Reuter at the TU Darmstadt. In addition to the PROCO chair, the Hessen Cyber Competence Center (Hessen3C) within the Hessian Ministry of the Interior and Sport, Virtimo AG and other associated partners are also involved.

More about the project (German language)

Stefan Stieglitz and Julian Marx from the PROCO Chair, Milad Mirbabaie from the University of Bremen and Deborah Bunker and Christian Ehnis from the University of Sydney have published an Open Access article in the Journal of Information Technology (JIT). The article examines which factors determine the influence of actors in social media communication on crisis situations. For this purpose, roughly 9.5 million tweets about Hurricane Harvey were analyzed to determine which factors are most likely to influence the entire conversation through the messages of individual actors (e.g. organizations such as the WHO, politicians or the media).

The results show that on the one hand the so-called Topical Authority and Topical Frequency of the actors determine their reach and influence, on the other hand a high value of message content or the distribution by popular actors. The results are discussed in the context of the COVID19 pandemic to show how they can provide a positive added value here.

The paper is part of the EU-funded RISE_SMA project, which promotes the international and interdisciplinary exchange of scientists and is coordinated by the PROCO chair.

Link to the article (Open Access)

Link to the RISE-Project

Due to the continuing contact restrictions to contain the coronavirus, all teaching will be digital in the summer semester 2020.

Accordingly, the Proco-Chair will also offer all courses digitally. Students who would like to take one of the courses of the char will find all necessary information in the Moodle course of a lecture. Please register on Moodle for the courses you would like to attend.

Overview of the courses of the Proco-Chair

Overview of the University of Duisburg-Essen

Older messages can be found in the archive.