Weizenbaum Conference 2025: Call for Papers

The Weizenbaum Institute is organizing its seventh annual Conference on the subject of “Empowering People in Online Spaces: Democracy and Well-being in Digital Societies”. We invite interested scholars to submit papers for presentations.

As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in the social fabric, their architectures and affordances co-shape individual and collective experiences across various dimensions. Interdisciplinary research highlights how people use different tools to nurture personal and professional relationships, enhance education, develop new skills, and foster healthier habits. Digital platforms, often powered by artificial intelligence systems, also serve as mediators for community connections, citizen-state interaction, and different forms of political participation, exerting growing influence on individual and collective well-being. This impact, however, is framed by imbalances in economic and political power related, for instance, to the global dominance of technology corporations and the capacity of nation-states to regulate and exert influence over the rapidly evolving digital markets.

The conference aims to examine these issues from a citizens and user perspective. It seeks to highlight theoretical and empirical research approaches focused on empowering people’s agency within online environments at both personal and collective levels. Ultimately, we would like to connect research that engages with the interface of digital technologies, democratic participation and individual well-being.

Possible topics for submission should combine science and technology studies approached with, for example, the following topics:

Impacts of (anti)democratic news consumption
The interplay of algorithmic and individual activity in online spaces
Community organization and fringe digital spaces
Online political participation and social cohesion in- and out-side times of crisis
Digital Elections, data-driven electoral campaigning and propaganda
Illiberal communications, reactionary speech and democratic transformations
Public values and political representation in an evolving public sphere
Digital state and platformized public services
Digital identity, collective and individual contestations of digital technologies
Accessibility, inequalities, and vulnerable populations in online spaces
Loneliness and kinship in the digital era
Digital interventions for deliberation and well-being online
Media and digital literacy
Regulatory approaches, ethical guidelines and values for digital governance
Democratic regulatory approaches to digital platforms and artificial intelligence
Emerging digital methods for policy analysis and social sciences research

Submission Deadline: 15 February 2025

More Information

For Details on how to submit see the Call for Papers