re:publica 18 - Politics & Society

Takura Zhangazha, Anne Marie C. Befoune, Aisha Dabo Political bloggers and online activists have gained increasing levels of attention by governments since their key role as information transmitters during the so called “Arab Spring”. In many parts of Africa, authorities can feel threatened by bloggers who are able to bypass the gatekeepers with their online avenues to free expression. Independent voices are regarded as threats and are monitored by state security networks. In this context, blogger networks can help to provide exchange, updates and common purpose. The international blogger network #AfricaBlogging is an online platform featuring a plurality of voices and views supporting democratic culture and debate in Sub-Saharan Africa. Founded in 2015 in Johannesburg, its members believe that blogs play a major role in providing information and diversity of opinion in Africa. They are committed to encouraging open debate on matters that are at times not adequately covered by traditional media such as politics, economics, gender equality, health and social matters. However, there is a growing trend for bloggers to be monetized ‘multiplicators’ and to become brands. Those who shun the native advertising and commercialization trends and feel their function in the information ecosystem is to offer critical analysis that fills the space between events and conventional media reporting, have to fight to remain independent and credible. From cyber-activism campaigns that helped bring an end to the Jammeh regime in the Gambia to the political reality-check that bloggers have been able to offer more recently about Zimbabwe’s political development, members of the network are at the forefront of social and political change across Africa. Join us in this session with three members of #AfricaBlogging to discuss the positioning of bloggers between activists and political analysts, how to remain independent and credible, and what it means to be a successful blogger in the post-truth world of social media and fake News.

Julian Jaursch Unser Talk gibt den Besucher*innen Informationsangebote an die Hand, mit denen sie auf verständliche, praxisnahe und spielerische Art ihre neuen EU-Datenschutzrechte kennenlernen und erfahren, wie sie diese Rechte auch einsetzen. Das neue EU-Datenschutzrecht wird genau drei Wochen nach dem Vortrag wirksam und bringt bedeutende Neuerungen für Verbraucher*innen mit sich, beispielsweise ein verbessertes Auskunfts- und Löschungsrecht. Doch es gibt kaum passende Informationsangebote, die Verbraucher*innen darauf aufmerksam machen, welche neuen Rechte sie haben und wie sie diese umsetzen. Daher ist es wichtig, dass Verbraucher*innen, die in der digitalen Welt einkaufen, Fotos teilen, Kredite beantragen oder Partner*innen finden, über ihre Rechte aufgeklärt werden. Mehr noch: Sie müssen befähigt werden, diese Rechte auch wahrzunehmen und durchzusetzen. Hier setzt der Vortrag an: Wir beleuchten die Bedeutung und Reichweite der neuen Datenschutzrechte, geben konkrete Beispiele für deren Anwendung im Alltag und präsentieren erstmals öffentlich einen kurzen Erklärfilm zur Datenschutzreform. Dieser ist Teil eines Informationsportals speziell für Verbraucher*innen, das auf der re:publica gelauncht wird. Um die vielfältigen Lebenswelten der Verbraucher*innen abzubilden und maßgeschneiderte Themeneinstiege zu ermöglichen, schaffen bei „Deine Daten. Deine Rechte.“ ein Online-Lernspiel, animierte Erklärvideos und verständliche Texte Aufmerksamkeit für die neuen Datenschutzregeln. Doch es geht nicht nur um Awareness: Die Materialien und der Talk mit einer kurzen Film- und Spielvorstellung zielen darauf ab, die Menschen zu befähigen und zu ermuntern, ihre Rechte tatsächlich wahrzunehmen. Der Digitale Gesellschaft e.V. hat die Materialien entwickelt, mit Förderung des Bundesministeriums der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz (BMJV).

Daniela Platsch, Walter Palmetshofer This talk is an update on what happened in the last year in the international taxation sphere. We will also provide a quick overview of the international taxation system. The topics of our talk will be: - Paradise Papers: After the famous #LuxLeaks and #PanamaPapers, the Paradise Papers were published in November 2017.  A set of 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments 19 tax jurisdictions. We will provide a summary, show the biggest cases, and demonstrate how this is a structural problem. - How many billions our favourite tech companies (Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft,...) evaded in taxes - The European Commission and parliament's positions on the European “tax heaven issues.”   - Structural issues and why this an endless story We will explain what a Double Irish Sandwich is and why international corporations like Google only pay 2.4% taxes. And how your favourite tech companies (Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft,...) evaded billions in taxes. This tax-dodging costs the European Union more than $50 billion. Annually. We bring this number into perspective. And why you pay more. And why this boring issue is one of the biggest questions of our time. Won't be boring.

Andreas Pawelke, Lejla Sadiku Digital data offers manifold opportunities to development. It enables organizations and individuals to strengthen decision-making processes, improve service delivery and elicit meaningful citizen participation, among others. At the same time, it generates new forms of exclusion, new methods of surveillance and threatens individual privacy. A recently published study is looking into the current state of data for development and emerging trends. For each of the six trends identified in the research, there are negative and positive potential scenarios as they unfold within the next years. For instance, more sources of data can make the development sector more agile, but may open opportunities for surveillance and threats to individual privacy. Artificial intelligence offers novel ways of tackling development problems, but in some cases, algorithms have proven to be biased, opaque and out of reach of scrutiny. While opening and sharing data between partners can serve the public good, this can also threaten citizen privacy due to the technical challenges of fully anonymising data. In this session, we will present the key findings of the study, provide practical examples of how digital data is being used in development and engage the audience in a discussion on the potential negative and positive scenarios of increased reliance on data to achieve development impact. supported by BMZ

Céline Keller In my talk I will argue, based on the thoughts of the brilliant Jamaican theorist Sylvia Wynter, that it is not humanism we need to get over but the racism and duality of the self and the other on which western humanism has been build and various times been reinvented. Traveling back in time, we will learn, how the value divide of heaven and earth of Christian medieval Europe and its structuring principle of body and spirit, has enabled first, the mighty power of the church, and was then remodeled, after Copernicus, into the superiority of the rational man over his irrational others, and finally with Darwin into the concept of the biologically (“naturally”) selected (white, male, straight, and rich) vs. the dysselected (nonwhite, female, queer, and poor).  We then take a look at transhumanism with its proponents, like Steve Fuller and Elon Musk, who seem to just reinvent this never changing pattern of exclusion and oppression, casting many of us as subhumans to be left behind.  How can we overcome this imaginary divide and opposition? 
 Can we instead invent a humanism that includes us all?  I will suggest that the pop culture zombies that keep haunting us might help.  In a world of the 1% against the 99%, when, without showing any shame, cynical billionaires build fortifications to fight off future climate refugees, people that, very well, could be called the Undead. Dehumanized humans, stripped of their value and whom we are made to believe, we will need to fight. Why do we still identify with the privileged survivors, when watching tv shows like The Walking Dead? Today, those imagined surviving groups of arms carrying people, might be portrayed as diverse, but does that really make sense? And why, is it so incredibly hard to create and sustain solidarity, that is more than an empty lip-service? How come, we are so fascinated, instead of appalled, with those narratives of competition of us against them? Aren’t we all, like the zombies, the superfluous 99%? 
In my talk, I will explore the dark side of humanism’s history and its cruel connection to de-humanization, racism and eugenics, and then link this history to the future proposed by transhumanism, and suggest, that identifying with the zombies instead of the cyborgs might help with imagining a new inclusive humanism, we urgently need.  ------- Some of the papers the talk will be based on:

 Sylvia Wynter: Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/ Power/Truth/Freedom Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument 
http://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/2432989/Wynter-2003-Unsettling-the-Coloniality-of-Being.pdf

 Steve Fuller - We May Look Crazy to Them, But They Look Like Zombies to Us: Transhumanism as a Political Challange 
https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/fuller20150909

Dale Knickerbocker - Why Zombies Matter:  The Undead as Critical Posthumanist 
https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstream/handle/11222.digilib/135003/1_BohemicaLitteraria_18-2015-2_7.pdf?sequence=1

Steve Lambert, Andrew Hudson, Mushon Zer-Aviv, Maya Indira Ganesh How can we use data analysis and AI, deterministic technological practices that are conservative by design, to build models for better futures? What can we learn from new genres in science fiction that break from dystopia and envision new, different and desirable futures? And how can activists and artists use Utopia as a tool in their political and creative practice?

Rajesh Laghari Take a state of emergency calling for immediate and radical change. Add a local population whose roots are deeply anchored within the very soil that threatens it. Top with a corrupt political system whose only interest is immediate gain and grandiose. Cook the time of one deadly air pollution crisis. Here's Mexico City left without a choice, constrained to relocate part of its population on the hillsides in order to recover its original lakebed, long forgotten under a layer of concrete. Developed as a cooperation between LabCDMX and N O R M A L S, the CDRMX relocation project prints new anti-seismic hillside districts and makes housing available for free to relocatees. But a financial compensation is needed, which takes shape as a unique form of local cryptocurrency-based universal income: La Renta. The project makes use of a dynamic ecosystem of accounts with different properties to incentivise participative economy, and introduces a novel way to collect taxes through self-devaluation. Universal income is not just a necessity for post-work societies, Rajesh Laghari explains, it is an opportunity to reinvent economy as a whole. La Renta is a social experiment we strongly believe in, and even though everything is working fine so far we do expect to find weaknesses in the pilot project. We are closely monitoring the way locals appropriate the income, how they embrace its participative aspects, and which new behaviours emerge.

Renato Losio When a user uploads a picture, posts on Facebook or searches on-line for the nearest events, location-based services are part of the equation. They present unexpected challenges to the developer who targets an international audience but wants to rely on location data to control new features. When a controversial decoding is in a disputed territory or a partially recognized state, the corner cases might become a support and PR nightmare: what are the safest patterns and how do the four big platforms (Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook) tackle issues related to geolocation? 35 participants

Eva Galperin, Maya Indira Ganesh Over the last year the world has witnessed a series of security breaches that have compromised massive repositories for personal information: the Equifax hack that compromised the should-be-secret social security numbers of over 140 million Americans; a breach of India’s Aadhaar biometric ID database of  1.2 billion citizens; the hack of the South Korean ID database; the 2015 US Office of Personnel Management hack; the effects of WannaCry on the British National Health Service; of vulnerabilities in Estonia’s ID chip card. And there is no guarantee there won’t be more in the future. The breaches and hacks of these databases tend to be discussed in terms of implications for personal privacy, and cybersecurity since data is viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold. Many of these databases are in fact public assets. How does the notion of ‘critical infrastructure’ scale beyond physical assets like bridges and roads or water supply systems? How do we rethink design, ownership, liability and security when large national databases are viewed as critical social and public infrastructure? As a national ID number is used to access a variety of services, we seek to show how this layer of ‘social infrastructure’ creates challenges for a variety of industries, social and public systems. We will parse tensions - and competing interests - at different levels of the infrastructure stack. Panelists will map the technical, social and personal impacts of database compromise, and in doing so will look at the role of various stakeholders and response strategies, as well as address what governments and individuals can do to take preemptive security measures.  As these systems do not offer citizens a way to ‘opt-out’, discussion will discuss philosophical notions of privacy and security, and try to rethink ethics and accountability in these contexts. The panel will also  assess the new challenges these large hacks have for digital security trainings and infosec best practices at the individual and organizational level given the increasingly asymmetrical power dynamics between citizens, states, corporations, and large digital artifacts like databases

John Weitzmann Die harte Lobby-Schlacht um den Artikel 13 der EU-Urheberrechtsreform bietet einen Vorgeschmack auf das, was in den nächsten Jahren droht: Netzweite automatisierte Filterung von Content. Wo jetzt am Beispiel von Urheberrechten vorgeprescht wird, um ihre Durchsetzung mittels Automatisierung noch kostengünstiger zu machen, stehen die nächsten Vorhaben schon in der Schlange: Ausfilterung von "iilegalem Content" allgemein, egal ob im Dienste der Terrorbekämpfung oder des Zurückdrängens von Hatespeech. Das Missbrauchspotenzial solcher Filtersysteme ist atemberaubend, die stets tangierten Grundrechte sollen über Beschwerdefunktionen gewahrt bleiben. Wir geben einen Überblick, wie die Argumentationen funktionieren, was da noch alles zu erwarten ist und warum es so wichtig ist, diese erste Schlacht um Artikel 13 zu gewinnen.

Jillian York Twitter launched its verification program, a symbol of fame and recognition initially handed out to major celebrities—actors, pro athletes, journalists, and the like. Facebook and YouTube soon followed, and in doing so, created an ecosystem whereby American corporations decide who's "in" and who isn't, who matters and who doesn't.  Today, verification comes with certain privileges—better features and a lower likelihood of being censored, for starters—but it is the creation of celebrity, the elevation of some at the expense of others by corporate actors that should concern us. This talk will explore the new kingmakers and the impact of their creation of celebrity on society.

Thomas Lohninger In dieser Session soll es darum gehen, ein Statusupdate über wichtige Entwicklungen zur Netzneutralität zu geben. Wir sprechen über die aktuellen Fälle in Deutschland und verorten uns in der europäischen und weltweiten Debatte eines Themas, um das immer noch gestritten wird. Mit dem versprochenen Start von 5G gibt es neue Angriffe der Telekom Industrie auf das offene Internet und das obwohl der bestehende EU Rechtsrahmen zur Netzneutralität noch in keinem EU Land voll umgesetzt ist.

Eva Yayi Mawa Upele, Yine Yenki Nyika, Nayla Zreik Fahed, Iffat Gill Poverty, illiteracy as well as armed conflicts continue to be the everyday reality for much of the world's population. One could reckon that being online appears to be the least of a problem for people in places affected by conflict. Additionally, power outages, scarce infrastructure and a lack of digital skills make the online world appear even further out of reach for them.  Despite - or perhaps precisely because of these challenges, civil society organizations use digital skills trainings to engage, educate and empower women and girls in these contexts. What is their motivation? What challenges do they face? And why is it so important to empower innovative, independent and self-confident women and girls? How do digital skills shape their understanding of the web and their own future prospects?  The session explores the potentials and challenges of teaching digital skills to female users in fragile contexts. Projects from South Sudan, Lebanon and Pakistan will present their approaches of how they use digital skills trainings to empower girls and women. supported by BMZ

Daniel Opper, Jeanette Hofmann, Götz Hamann, Johnny Haeusler, Malte Spitz 2017 war der Entwurf einer "Charta der Digitalen Grundrechte der Europäischen Union" eines der großen Themen auf der re:publica17. Seitdem hat der Kreis der Initiatoren die Kritikpunkte und Anregungen an dem Charta-Entwurf gesammelt und nach ausführlichen Diskussionen eine zweite überarbeitete Fassung der DigitalCharta beschlossen. Diese wird auf der re:publica2018 vorgestellt und diskutiert.  Die Digital Charta versucht, Antworten zu geben auf die Frage, wie sich die Freiheit des Einzelnen im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung schützen lässt – gegenüber Staaten, aber auch gegenüber internationalen Großkonzernen.So unterbreitet der Entwurf unter anderem Vorschläge zur Autonomie und Freiheit des Einzelnen, zum Einsatz und zur Entwicklung künstlicher Intelligenz, zu informationeller Selbstbestimmung und Datensicherheit und zu weiteren wichtigen Aspekten wie dem Meinungsfreiheit im Netz. Zu den 27 Initiatoren der Digital Charta gehören Experten aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen der Zivilgesellschaft wie Heinz Bude, Juli Zeh, Johnny Haeusler, Ulrich Wilhelm, Jeanette Hofmann, Sascha Lobo, Martin Schulz und Rebecca Casati. Etwa 50 prominente Persönlichkeiten unterstützen den Entwurf. Zu den Unterzeichnern gehören: Jürgen Habermas, Wolfgang Ischinger, Jaron Lanier, Miriam Meckel, Heribert Prantl und Norbert Röttgen. Auf die Erstveröffentlichung im Dezember 2016 folgte eine große öffentliche Debatte. Neben Zustimmung gab es eine ganze Reihe von Kritikpunkten und Verbesserungsvorschlägen - diese wurden zum Gegenstand eines ausführlichen Überarbeitungsprozesses. Der überarbeitete Vorschlag wird auf der re:publica 2018 vorgestellt und ist ab dann auch im Netz abrufbar und weiter kommentierbar. Im Anschluss an die Präsentation und Kurzdiskussion auf Bühne 5 gibt es die Möglichkeit, mit den Panelisten im " POPup-Room" bei einem Getränk weiter zu diskutieren.

Volker Hassemer, Mona Rübsamen, Wolfgang Kaschuba Es muss und wird um etwas zusätzliches gehen: Die Arbeit für das Gemeinsame, für Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: keine übliche "Erwerbsarbeit". "Erarbeitet" wird Gemeinwohl. Das tauchte bisher als eigenes Arbeitsfeld (und es ist natürlich deutlich mehr als das große Feld der sozialen Arbeit) nicht auf. Das war Sache von Politik und Verwaltung, war kein Arbeitsfeld der Bürgerinnen und Bürger. Inzwischen wird immer klarer, dass dieses Verständnis von Arbeit (wer diese Arbeit zu leisten hat) für das Gemeinsame nicht mehr ausreicht. Wir werden ein neues System der Arbeit für das Gemeinsame entwickeln müssen. Da werden wir nicht unsere demokratischen "Errungenschaften" vergessen, aber sie werden nicht ausreichen. Die Richtung geht in ein kooperatives Verhältnis von Bürgerinnen und Politik. Und das führt zu einem originären Arbeitsfeld für die, für uns Bürgerinnen. Ob das richtig ist, wie dieses Arbeitsfeld aussehen sollte - darüber sollte man sprechen.

Sweta Banerjee, Tawanda Mthintwa Hove, Markus Matiaschek Believe it or not, for the first time in human history the eradication of hunger is within our grasp. Even though, statistically speaking, every 9th person on earth still goes to bed hungry. That means 815 million people suffer from hunger worldwide. Welthungerhilfe, one of the largest private aid organisations in Germany, has adopted UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 and aims to eradicate hunger wherever the organization works by 2030 (#ZeroHunger). In 2016, the organisation reached around 8.4 million people in 39 countries. However, to speed up progress to #Zerohunger and ensure the goal is actually reached, new approaches must be developed. Welthungerhilfe has been successfully testing the use of digital innovations for years. We show two promising examples that have recently been developed in an internal innovation camp and which are currently being tested in a pilot phase for their scaling potential. The Child Growth Monitor is an app that uses augmented reality to detect malnutrition in children. A 3D scan records height and weight to immediately determine if the child is malnourished. Machine learning improves results over time. Digital data collection saves time and money and shows immediately where action is required. Initial trials of the app were conducted in India in March, where malnutrition is widespread among children. The smartphone app AgriShare is intended to connect smallholder farmers with each other to enable collaboration based on the principle of the sharing economy. The project, which is to enter the pilot phase in Zimbabwe, has already won an award at the WFP Innovation Pitch Night.  We present the digital innovations and want to report on the experiences and opportunities and discuss the limits and risks with you.

Jamie Woodcock, Mark Graham As ever more people from low-income countries connect to the Internet, these workers are placed into fierce competition with one another. Lacking the ability to collectively bargain, these workers have little ability to negotiate wages or working conditions with their employers who are often on the other side of the world. Many workers have jobs characterized by long and irregular hours, low income, and high stress. The international nature of digital work means that it tends largely to be done outside of the purview of national governments, with very few employers paying attention to relevant existing regulation in either their home countries or the worker’s home country. International digital labour platforms threaten to undermine workers’ ability to defend existing jobs, liveable wages, and dignified working conditions, in both low- and high-income countries. In almost all types of platform-mediated work, workers themselves have found it extremely challenging to exert any sort of power to bargain with the platform. This workshop will present the Fairwork Foundation as a strategy to address the issue of fair work on online platforms. Taking inspiration from the Fairtrade movement, this approach involves a programme of innovative data collection alongside a certification of the quality of work on these platforms.  The German Ministry for Cooperation and Development supports the work of the Fairwork Foundation.

Marie Bröckling tba

Cora Czarnecki Die Motivation für die Auseinandersetzung mit den Funktionsweisen des Netzdiskurses ist die Beobachtung gewesen, dass regressive politische Bewegungen weltweit zunehmen. Diese neuen rechten Bewegungen fußen oft auf einer ausgeprägten Online-Community, in der ideologische Propaganda und Gruppenidentität hergestellt wird. In verschiedenen Online-Foren, Bulletin Boards und Gruppen, werden netzspezifische Praktiken entwickelt und eingesetzt, wie z.B. Memes über die "kulturelle und politische Identitäten kommuniziert und verhandelt werden" ( SHIFMAN 2014). Memes eignen sich um einfache Werte wie Tradition, Heimat und Sicherheit zu transportieren. Fraglich ist jedoch, inwiefern sie dazu in der Lage sind differenzierte Inhalte in Diskurse einzubringen. Die Fragestellung meines Talks lautet deshalb: was für eine Rolle spielen Memes für einen progressiven Feminismus? Um solch eine Wirkungsweise zu untersuchen, werde ich meine Analyse des Memes #metoo vorstellen. Bei der darauf folgenden Auswertung werde ich unter anderem exemplarisch die Auswirkung auf die beteiligten Nutzer*innen untersuchen und inwiefern sich sein feministisches Versprechen eingelöst hat. Zudem wird die Auswirkung auf gesellschaftliche Strukturen, sowie den entsprechenden Netzdiskurs ausgewertet. Neue Medien und insbesondere Social-Media-Platformen, gehören zum Alltag. Memes spielen darin eine wichtige Rolle. Sie sind Teil gesellschaftlicher Prozesse und beeinflussen Meinungsbildung und das Aushandeln von Normen. Es ist wichtig die damit zusammenhängenden Entwicklungen zu erkennen, zu untersuchen und zu reflektieren welche Bedeutung und Auswirkung sie auf die Gesellschaft haben.

Ferda Ataman, Dominik Wullers, Kijan Espahangizi Der Rechtsruck ist spürbar, die Debatten werden immer rauer. Und für Minderheiten und alle, die als "fremd" markiert werden, wird es immer schwerer, in den Diskussionen ihren Standpunkt zu vertreten. Meist geraten sie in eine Situation, in der sie sich für etwas rechtfertigen müssen. Umso wichtiger ist es, im Netz und in den Medien mehr Sichtbarkeit von People of Color zu erreichen und eigene Themen zu setzen. Aber wie? Und mit welchen Inhalten? In einer Podiumsdikussion, die auch die Situation in der Schweiz in den Blick nimmt, soll das diskutiert werden. Fragen aus dem Publikum sind erwünscht!