Oliver Zöllner

In the context of digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI), data protection and digital ethics are trending topics. However, they are rarely considered in conjunction even though they are inextricably linked. This volume sets out to close this gap. Informational self-determination is an expression of a European understanding of values, particularly with regard to smart technologies and AI applications. In addition to socially relevant dimensions of data protection and digital ethics, the authors of this edited collection point out and analyze the influences of networked technologies on the experience and manipulation of modern reality and its rootedness in the everyday.

In his article "Political Landscape (with Castle Ruins): A Pictorial Document of Identity Discourses in East Belgium", Oliver Zöllner uses Ralf Bohnsack's (2013) "documentary method" to analyze a PR picture taken from a brochure of a regional authority as a pictorial document that encapsulates underlying discourses of identity, or rather identities in the plural, within the German-speaking Community of eastern Belgium, one of the three linguistic Communities of the federally organized kingdom. The analyzed image of a young woman in front of a castle ruin captures the "habitus" of the relatively small population group, the article argues. This habitus draws on partly conflictual and unclear interpretations of the past and future of the German-speaking population on the one hand, and on the debate about 'belonging' and 'demarcation' in a borderland (where the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and France are in proximity), on the other. To paraphrase art historian Martin Warnke (1992), the analyzed photograph is an example of a political image that sets a stage, or landscape, for further scrutiny. The darkness of the past, which is embodied by the dark castle ruin in the background of the picture, is in stark contrast to the shiningly bright figure of the young woman in the foreground whose features of fertility symbolize a future for the German-speaking minority. The picture's combined narratives, complex as they are, may represent inroads for progressive perspectives of ethnic or regional identity committed to the "emancipatory principle of intercultural tolerance and cosmopolitan openness", which can be seen as the essence of 'Belgitude' (Sepp 2010: 22).

Digitality requires new ethical approaches in the context of an all-encompassing mediatization. At the same time, the advance of artificial intelligence (AI) brings forth additional new challenges, as do questions about the ecological responsibility of digital technologies. This edited volume presents a broad range of topics and case studies linked to the sub-discipline of digital ethics. What all contributions in this book have in common, regardless of the their academic or philosophical perspective, is a focus on the question whether human beings are taken into account appropriately when new technologies are developed and applied.

This article ("Looting or Sharing?") is located at the intersection of societal and ecological discourses, and analyzes local actions from the perspective of digital ethics. The case study is centered around a public bookcase (or free library) in a neighborhood in the Ruhr area, a post-industrial and partly impoverished metropolitan district in Germany. The rather banal local actions - people take books from the public bookcase as is the proclaimed objective of having such an institution in the first place - eventually morph into highly polarized discussion threads on a local social media platform that are charged with bitter accusations of "looting" (i.e., allegations of some people taking out too many books) and rife with outrage (i.e., allegations of some people selling books taken from the free library on secondary markets). This debate reflects a conflict that points to larger social divisions and rifts. This is analyzed empirically (via a discourse analysis) and philosophically (drawing on Aristotle as well as contemporary debates on moralism). When the free sharing of books, i.e., the recycling of otherwise unused goods, gets scandalized by some residents of the neighborhood as "looting," as the accusations on social media proclaim, this conflict suggests a self-referential moralism among the online discussants. Epistemic fallacies combined with irrational counterfactual claims lead to immoderate hypercriticism. This is a finding that can be observed in many online debates and points to larger disruptions in the digital arena.

This article seeks to analyse the images that accompany the hybrid musical genre of the 1960s and 1970s called Anatolian Pop in Turkey. Anatolian pop music developed in a globalising-localising context, a ‘liminal’ place and space of both domestic and international cross-cultural communication. It is equally located at the intersection of rural and urban environments and thinking, a space the autors call 'rurban'. The rurban character of Anatolian Pop is for one part present within the music, but also in its materiality, e.g., in the images produced alongside this music: for record covers, magazines and films that show musicians, fashion garments, accessories, and instruments. These images can be read as documents of particular social, temporal and/or spatial relationships, and can thus be analysed in the context of the sociology of knowledge. Mainly based on a sample of a 1970s Turkish weekly pop-culture magazine, the article examines how the interplay of rurban fashion and music works, and how these discourses were framed in the photographic images. The authors also investigate the visual and discursive links between Turkish "kostüme avantür" (costumed adventure) films of the period and Anatolian pop music. Thus, the objective of this analysis is to uncover the incorporated habitus of the period, i.e., the sometimes unconscious and unreflected patterns of behaviour and valuation in a society, of which 1960s/70s Turkey is a very telling example.

Can the military engage in symmetric dialogues with their publics as part of their public relations activities? Is it conceivable that a branch of the armed forces no longer relies on traditional modes of communication modeled on the one-sided, top-down command structure aimed at persuasion so typical of the military? This book analyzes the communication concept of a special agency of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr Academy for Information and Communication, founded in 1990 (right after the end of the Cold War, as it seemed then) as the successor to the disbanded Academy for Psychological Defence. The new organizational unit set out to develop a dialogic PR model which inherently drew on theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and his seminal work, The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). In line with this theory, as the study reconstructs in detail, the Academy's concept, or main strategy, was decidedly un-strategic in that it did neither pursue predetermined communicative outcomes nor seek to persuade members of target groups. The concept was rather focused, first and foremost, to negotiate mutual trust and understanding between dialogic partners -- a key feature of a discursive public sphere and in line with ideals of a liberal democracy. From the beginning, the Academy was aware that any dialogic relationship of this kind would be fragile, including the risk of being "unsuccessful," thereby displaying an open attitude that is remarkable for any military institution. This book analytically reconstructs the Academy's communication strategy, its theoretical sources and underlying motifs. The study is based on extensive document analyses, on-site research and interviews with commanders and staff.

This research article introduces the concept of public diplomacy within the framework of international relations and transnational communication. It looks at how Germany, by way of her international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, addresses Arabic-speaking target groups in post-9/11 public diplomacy, and how "dialogic" such mediatized endeavors can be. For this end, the article presents a critical analysis of the requirements of dialogue drawing on Habermas’s (1984) Theory of Communicative Action. What transpires is a determination of Deutsche Welle as an organization to at least present a quest for dialogue as a projection of Germany’s national values, policies, and self-image. The invocation of "dialogue" via Deutsche Welle's Arabic-language radio, television and online channels may reflect a reassertion of the very self-image Germany feels most comfortable with: that of the Open-minded Society of Consensus as one of the country’s grand narratives.

In this essay written for a general audience, the idea and concept of the metaverse is introduced and analyzed with particular emphasis on future forms of human interaction and sociality. The current state of exploitative data capitalism is criticized and used as a reference for questioning the dehumanizing view of people as mere data points in a possible "Metaverse" as envisaged by the likes of Meta, Inc., and other companies. The essay concludes by asking what could be a good life in virtual environments.

This article analyzes a photographic PR handout that was widely circulated in media the world all over in 2013, depicting the future heir to the British throne, Prince William, and his wife, Catherine, presenting their new-born baby to the world. This photograph is scrutinized in great detail employing Bohnsack's documentary method, a strain of reconstructive social research, alongside analytical methods that have their origin in art history. In particular, the article analyzes the iconicity of the seemingly 'private' snapshot, and reconstructs what constructs of dominion are at play in the picture and its inherent social contexts. This royal picture, the article argues, displays forms of the sacred. In turn, it also profanates what is sacred about it by reverting to modes of bourgeois self-representation that panders to the general public and tries to win it over, or back, to the idea of monarchic rule, however symbolic the latter may be. In the analyzed picture, power is manifested by way of a specific habitus of the iconic protagonists that glosses over and negates crises and rifts in British society.

This article, an introduction to the edited volume "Mensch - Maschine" ("Man - Machine"), looks at the relationship between humans and machines from a pop cultural angle. Taking its cue from, and analyzing, Kraftwerk's seminal electropop album "Man - Machine" (1978) from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, the article identifies key topical areas that are inherent in Kraftwerk's work (and not just in the lyrics). These provide critical questions that are relevant for inquiries into the nature of man/machine relationships even today (and even without caring about Kraftwerk or electropop at all).

This monographic study examines general listening patterns with regard to the music/audio streaming service Spotify and in particular the perceived personal autonomy of the platform's users when making listening decisions on the platform. Drawing on theories from media and communication studies, psychology, philosophy and ethics, and employing in-depth interviews as its data-collection method, the study formulates three guiding questions. These relate to the importance of Spotify in the lives of users as well as the awareness of personal autonomy while using the application, and how this is evaluated. It can be concluded that Spotify plays a significant role in the lives of its users. In terms of usage itself, most respondents are aware that Spotify uses algorithms that suggest audio content to them. These are accepted and used by all respondents, which tentatively indicates a limited autonomy of the users. At the same time, users feel like being in a position of control over their decisions and choices, as they feel they can act autonomously by clicking and downloading audio content. Even the problem that Spotify collects vast amounts of user and behavior data and exploits it, inter alia, for advertising purposes, triggers little skepticism among the respondents. All in all, Spotify manages to gain the trust of users with regard to its data handling as well as it creates or reinforces users' confidence in their own perceived autonomy.

In the context of digitalization, the analogue vinyl record has gained new popularity in a robust niche market since around the mid-2000s. This book chapter analyzes this commodity object from a critical capitalist perspective and classifies it into four commodity forms of the post-industrial economy. Based on this, the logic of particularity inherent in the vinyl record and related practices of singularization are demonstrated. With a view to changes in technical playback equipment and related changing reception dispositives in dealing with music, the authors conclude that the current vinyl culture reflects a division of society. The culturality of the vinyl record points to specific interweavings with its users, which is expressed in multilayered practices, narratives, and myths. The article concludes by arguing that the vinyl record is a crystallization point for a comprehensive, partly paradoxical social discourse on modernization processes, especially on the metaprocess of digitalization.

This article analyzes how pop music has dealt with visions and impacts of digiti­zation and cybernation, looking at selected key works from the late 1960s throughout the 1990s. Taking its perspective from the sociology of knowledge, it identifies pop music’s trajectory of imaginations in the context of techno­logical change processes. The article concludes that the artistic treatment of these processes remains largely vague and ambiguous, its habitus for the most part dystopian. In fact, rarely did pop music cover digitization and cybernation at all in the period under scrutiny. This relative lack of coverage due to oversight or denial may be attributed to a stance based on nihilistic avoidance unconsciously incorporated in the historical situation.

This article is an introduction to the concept of disposition (hexis) and what it means and entails in digital contexts. The increasingly digitized world that many people find themselves in needs to be seen in a larger context of five partly overlapping meta-processes of modernization, each of which calls for identifying appropriate virtues: (1) globalization, (2) economization, (3) digitalization, (4) mediatization, and (5) alienation. These processes and their inherent challenges are explained and illustrated with examples ranging from the lives of Marcus Aurelius and Hunter S. Thompson, the popularity of social networking sites, to Alphabet's discontinued collaboration with the Pentagon's Project Maven.

What functions can rituals fulfill in the context of media and specifically in relation to young people? What ethical implications are associated with the issues of "media - rituals - youth"? These questions were the focus of the ninth symposium on media ethics at Stuttgart Media University where three types of "media rituals" emerged: On the one hand, there are rituals mediated by the media, through which societies can reassure themselves of their values. The second is rituality in the act of communication itself, i.e., the meaning-generating reception, production, and interaction of and with media. The third characteristic refers to the rituality evoked by media. Here, the meaning of the depicted actions or events is first generated by the media's staging or structuring.

In this volume, "Brave New World of Communication or the End of Privacy?," communication and media scholars, industry representatives and data protectionists reflect on the urge to present one's self online on social media and other popular media formats, and the ensuing weakened sense of what is private. In the context of empirical findings, aspects of an ethics of privacy as well as concepts of privacy and its economization and possible regulation will be discussed. The focus is on the understanding of privacy that underlies the use of social networks: are there different notions of privacy online and offline? How should individuals and society deal with the challenges of social networking sites? How can users be empowered to engage in self-determined privacy management?

The media are not only an arena for creating and sustaining gender identites and related norms of behavior, they also formulate value judgments and generate notions of masculinity and femininity, i.e., they help define what 'women' and 'men' should be like and what counts as deviation. For young people in particular, role models portrayed in the media are identification material for their own gender identity formation. This volume explores, from a perspective of media ethics, mediated representations of genders, how they are generated, and what the role of justice may be in such contexts.

"Economization" is a major narrative of the present. Related processes of marketization or commodification of many central areas of life can be observed. Whether in politics, in the media, in education, science and culture: efficiency criteria are postulated and often understood as if there were no alternative. The belief in an invisible hand of the market has almost become a dogma: statistics, rankings and evaluations become mediatized lead currencies. People are supposed to behave in such a way that they function better and more smoothly. How can people lead a good life under the conditions of such norms? Which maxims of individual conduct of life are beneficial to society and to sociality? What can a new ethic of values look like in the context of economization?

Digital everyday life brings with it new kinds of challenges. Transparency and anonymity are becoming relevant values for individual identity. Visibility is a fundamental condition for participating in society. But how can people deal with the insecurity that is inherent in self-presentation on the Net when we use personal data to pay for the (apparently) free services of data-hungry companies? Subjects are thus constructed and evaluated only from individual puzzle pieces of their identity, while the remaining parts inevitably remain "invisible." Consequently, can the ideal of empowering people to be masters of their tools only be secured through a pseudonymous appearance on the Internet? But how can communicative action function if the agent remains in the dark?

The digitalized (and rapidly ever more digitizing) present is often characterized by forced transparency and a system of comprehensive data exploitation. From the perspective of child and youth protection, this results in numerous impositions and dangers that minors are usually not yet able to assess. Against this backdrop, digital ethics aims to provide guidance by developing consensual criteria and ethical standards for a successful life online. The concept of "digital citizenship" outlined in the article aims to provide young people with the competence to lead a life with digital applications and their social obligations and demands in a confident manner.