Meta-research
Meta-research makes digitalization research itself the object of analysis. It is intended to provide orientation about the research field and its relationship to society. The WI wants to moderate the development of digitalization research, give it impulses and link the activities on the regional, national and international level. The WI wants to reflect this task scientifically.
Digitalization research is being conducted in many disciplines and is developing very quickly; the research field does not yet have clear contours and is difficult to oversee. The Weizenbaum Institute wants to play a pioneering role in the development of digitalization research. To this end, research topics and methods are continuously examined and further developed through interdisciplinary formats and in mutual exchange and dialogue with social actors.
The content-related and institutional structures of digitalization research will be empirically elaborated in meta-analyses. This will provide a better overview and discussion of focal points and progress, but also of deficits, so that resources can be deployed in a more targeted manner in the future. The discussion of standards for digitalization research and the identification of "best practice" examples can also improve the quality of research.
In addition to looking at the science system, the relationship of digitalization research to society will also be analyzed. Surveys and content analyses can be used to determine, for example, which topics and problems are relevant to society and should be addressed in research in the future. In addition, the social consequences of digitalization research will be observed, e.g., whether and how research results are used in public discourse or contribute to evidence-based political decisions. This shows how successful knowledge transfer and social dialog are.
