Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 112
Posts 41 - 50

So gewaltig wie die Erfindung der Schrift

(As huge as the invention of writing)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 21.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, marketing, politics, threat
Summary | The digitalization is the most significant development of our time. Created for the democratization of information, it can however also be used for the opposite. The Chinese government are already using the internet as a means to survey their citizens and assess their loyalty. Artificial intelligence technologies are in place to calculate the shortest way to your destination, predict crimes, predict illnesses and cancer risks, as well as what book you will buy next. Amazon sends customers unsolicited products because the loss of having to return the product by mail is smaller than the profit of the customer keeping the well suggested item. Facebook has been created to connect people within a community but the platform cannot battle the hate language and cyberbullying to the extent that it influences presidential elections.
Image Description | Heisenberg media image of the author at a public speaking event with another man.
Image Tags | male(s)

Vong diesem Mann her kommt 1 neue Sprache

(Fromg this man comes 1 new language)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 16.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | language threat, meme, social media, spelling
Summary | A meme is floating around in social media spaces. The "Vong" language is parodying serious language by incorporation orthographical and grammatical mistakes as well as tautology. It has become incredibly popular on social media and has even appeared in Germans' spoken language and advertisements. Common features of it are replacing the indefinite articles "eine/ein" ("a") with a "1" and adding the phrase "vong... her" usually including a redundant tautalogical statement and the misspelled preposition "von". An example would be: "The weather is really nice, sun-wise." Here, the "sun-wise" is the tautological statement and it would also include an orthographical error in "Vong" language.
Image Description | N/A

Für kluge Menschen ist Twitter das bessere Tinder

(For smart people Twitter is better than Tinder)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 13.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | gender, online dating, research/study, Twitter
Summary | Online dating apps like Tinder clearly put the focus on images. Considering that many womenvalue a sense of humor very highly in a partner, people should be looking for partners on Twitter because that is where most people showcase their wit. A recent dating survery on Twitter has shown that many users are single and looking for a partner and that many follow other Twitter users out of romantic interest. Most however also report not thinking that Twitter is an appropriate platform to ask someone out on a date.
Image Description | Image of a woman in a cafe looking at her smartphone.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Das Monster lebt

(The monster is alive)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, threat
Summary | Facebook is hiring thousands of new employees to battle cyberbullying on their platform and to remove offensive material as quickly as possible. But a couple thousand are not very many people to combat wrongdoings of 2 billion users. German politicians are trying to make Facebook comply with local laws about removing illegal content from the internet but Facebook is nowhere near fulfilling those requirements.
Image Description | A photograph of a man holding a smartphone showing the Facebook logo and the face of a monster.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s), smartphone

Kopfschuss: Glatte Eins!

(Shot to the head: A+!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | game, gender, school, threat, youth
Summary | A school in Norway is offering a course in E-sport, i.e. playing online team sports in shooter video games like Counter:Strike. The course is very popular among the male students (only one female student has taken the course) and has shown that students at risk of failing the year tend to do better in school overall when they are in a video game class. They get boosts of self-confidence because they can hold presentations about something they are passionate about. The school wants to reflect their students' reality in their curriculum and video games are a passion of many students and a future job for some of them. Shooter games are less stigmatized in Norway than in Germany.
Image Description | Image of male students playing video games.
Image Tags | game, male(s), school

Hinter dem Hashtag #BlauerWal steckt eine verstörende Geschichte

(A disturbing story hides behind the hashtag #BlueWhale)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 18.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, hashtags, law, social media, threat, youth
Summary | Currently, a man is on trial in Russian courts for supposedly urging 15 teenagers to commit suicide. The case is connected to the #BlueWhale challenge that is said to circulate online on social media. It is a lethal game where one person gives another increasingly self-destructive tasks. Apparently, psychologically fragile teenagers are targeted online.
Image Description | Getty image of a blue whale and images of a man being arrested and in trial with his face pixellated.
Image Tags | male(s)

Gesucht: Putzkräfte fürs Netz

(Wanted: cleaning personnel for the net)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 10.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law
Summary | Facebook is hiring thousands of people to check their platform for offensive content. Artificial intelligence and algorhythms have proven to be incapable of dealing with all nuances of human communication. They were not able to reliably identify cyberbullying content and fake news. Facebook is admitting the boundaries of technological possibilities and now hiring humans to do the job.
Image Description | Reuters image of a hand holding a smartphone in front of a screen showing the Facebook logo.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, smartphone

Wenn's der Menschheit nutzt

(If it's useful for humanity)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 11.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, brain, Facebook, law, threat
Summary | Artificial intelligence is creeping into all aspects of life. The police are already working with big data to predict crimes before even the culprits know they will commit a crime. Medicine is using kinds of artificial intelligence for prosthetics like exoskeletons. Facebook is also looking into ways to read brain activity and translate it into text. All these innovations are very risky and can become very destructive.
Image Description | N/A

"Wir können die Demokratie durch Schweigen verlieren"

("We can lose democracy by keeping quiet")

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 3.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, law, politics
Summary | Journalist Dunja Hayali is a strong critic of online hate. It is ever present for regular people as cyberbullying and becomes more problematic when political figures like Donald Trump do it. He routinely debases women, muslims, and Mexicans on Twitter and goes unpunished. Hayali has previously sued people for posting hate comments about her online and one of her cyberbullies has just been charged.
Image Description | Portrait of journalist Dunja Hayali.
Image Tags | female(s)

Facebook will Menschen mit dem Gehirn tippen lassen

(Facebook wants to let people type with their brain)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 21.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | brain, Facebook, privacy, research/study, translation
Summary | Facebook is working on ways to enable people to write without typing. Stanford university has succeeded in implanting electrodes into a woman's brain letting her type merely by thinking. This would also eventually enable people to write in languages that they do not speak because our brain does not function verbally. Facebook is however very clear about not wanting to read people's minds completely without their consent. The technology would only pick up selective thoughts wich users consent to sharing.
Image Description | N/A

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