In this research focus, the connection between digitalization, participation and inequality is to be researched, the use of digital technologies for participation opportunities is to be tested and interventions against new inequalities are to be made. To this end, perspectives from business informatics, design research and computer science will be brought together.

In recent years, markets and publics have emerged on digital platforms, which are investigated in the four research groups of the focus area. Normatively, these platforms are in tension between public good orientation and economic imperatives. For their investigation, the perspectives of communication science, political science, economics, and computer science are brought together.

Within this research focus we deal with questions about the workplace, the education system, and science. Above all we examine questions of openness and exclusion in the processing and organization of data and knowledge. In doing so, we draw on perspectives from computer science, business informatics, sociology, and innovation research.

This research focus examines the development of digital infrastructures and the resulting structural change in society. Special attention is given to tensions between security and freedom from the perspectives of law, sociology, computer science, and political science.

With the new Weizenbaum Digital Science Center, the Weizenbaum Institute establishes scientific offerings that create research, networking, orientation, and infrastructure services for interdisciplinary digitalization research and strengthen the coherence of research at the Weizenbaum Institute.