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Das Recht der Daten im Kontext der Digitalen Ethik (edited book)Nomos. 2024.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 …Read more
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12Paradoxien des digitalen Wandels: Positionen zu einer kritischen Digitalen EthikIn Sybille Krämer & Jörg Noller (eds.), Was ist digitale Philosophie? Phänomene, Formen und Methoden, Brill | Mentis. pp. 83-118. 2024.The authors review existing concepts of digital ethics and lay the groundwork for deeper, and more critical, approaches. 1) What is digital ethics - and what does it mean? 2) Digital ethics and critique 3) Digital economy and technological design 4) Digitality embedded in the everyday 5) Digitality, culture and society 6) Paradoxes of digital transformation: Towards a (new) digital ethics
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9Politische Landschaft (mit Burgruine): Ein Bilddokument von Identitätsdiskursen in OstbelgienIn Arvi Sepp & Lesley Penné (eds.), Ostbelgische Querverbindungen: Literarische Repräsentationen einer Grenzregion, Waxmann. pp. 71-94. 2023.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. T…Read more
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10Medien – Ethik – Digitalisierung: Aktuelle Herausforderungen (edited book)Franz Steiner Verlag. 2023.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 perspe…Read more
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Plünderung oder Sharing? Analyse eines moralisierten Diskurses im digitalen Raum und die Frage der Wiederverwendung von materiellen GüternIn Petra Grimm, Harald Pechlaner & Oliver Zöllner (eds.), Medien – Ethik – Digitalisierung: Aktuelle Herausforderungen, Franz Steiner Verlag. pp. 109-133. 2023.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 …Read more
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21Anatolian Pop Music: 'Rurban' Images of a PeriodIn Ralf von Appen & Peter Klose (eds.), 'All the Things You Are': Die materielle Kultur populärer Musik, Transcript-verlag. pp. 111-138. 2023.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, bu…Read more
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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 …Read more
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12A Quest for Dialogue in International Broadcasting: Germany's Public Diplomacy Targeting Arab AudiencesGlobal Media and Communication 2 (2): 160-182. 2006.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. W…Read more
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17In 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 e…Read more
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8Digitalisierung und AlltagsweltPraefaktisch.De: Ein Philosophieblog. 2023.This blogpost article is an overview of what links digitalization with the everyday, and what challenges new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence entail for leading a good life.
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17Was ist eine Ökonomisierung der Wertesysteme? Gibt es einen Geist der Effizienz im mediatisierten Alltag? Einleitende Bemerkungen zum Thema des BuchesIn Petra Grimm & Oliver Zöllner (eds.), Ökonomisierung der Wertesysteme: Der Geist der Effizienz im mediatisierten Alltag, Steiner. pp. 7-18. 2015.This foreword gives an overview of ethical perspectives on the question of economization and commodification. Major theories are reviewed and linked to the overarching (and seemingly inevitable) idea and leitmotif of the "market" as the driving force of societal action and organization.
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15Claudia Paganini: Werte für die Medien(ethik) (review)Medien Und Kommunikationswissenschaft 69 (2): 326-327. 2021.A review of Claudia Paganini's monograph, "Werte für die Medien(ethik)" ["Values for media (ethics)"], published in 2020.
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2Das Picknick von Bucklebury: ein Genrebild erfolgreicher Herrschaftsdiskurse im Medienzeitalter. Eine dokumentarische AnalyseIn Matthias Junge (ed.), Das Bild in der Metapher: Bilder des Erfolgs – Bilder des Scheiterns, Springer Vs. pp. 89-115. 2019.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 …Read more
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5Wer sind die Roboter? Eine popkulturell abgeleitete Sicht auf das Mensch-Maschine-VerhältnisIn Petra Grimm & Oliver Zöllner (eds.), Mensch – Maschine: Ethische Sichtweisen auf ein Spannungsverhältnis, Steiner. pp. 7-17. 2018.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 th…Read more
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2Wenn Spotify den Ton angibt: Audiostreaming-Dienste und die Frage nach der persönlichen AutonomieHochschule der Medien. 2022.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…Read more
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17Vermessen, verzweifelt, verliebt? Das un/glückliche Selbst im Spannungsfeld digitaler Technologien: Drei Fallstudien (edited book)Hochschule der Medien. 2021.This e-book brings together three empirical case studies. From the perspective of digital ethics they analyze and reflect on how people deal with the challenges of (1) self-tracking, (2) mental health, and (3) online dating. There are numerous apps available for each of these fields, and these programs promise their users solutions that may turn into 'solutionism'. But are apps the solution to living a successful life?
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1Die Vinylschallplatte als Zeichen- und Handlungsträger gesellschaftlicher Transformationen in der DigitalisierungIn Christian Schwarzenegger, Erik Koenen, Christian Pentzold, Thomas Birkner & Christian Katzenbach (eds.), Digitale Kommunikation und Kommunikationsgeschichte. Perspektiven, Potentiale, Problemfelder, Böhland & Schremmer. pp. 343-373. 2022.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 …Read more
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16Reconstructing Future Visions from the Past: Pop Music Imagining Digitization and CybernationTransformational Pop. Transitions, Breaks, and Crises in Popular Music (Studies) (= ~Vibes – the Iaspm D-a-Ch Series, Vol. 2). 2022.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 …Read more
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Haltung im digitalen Zeitalter: Wie wir der Welt begegnenIn Petra Grimm, Tobias O. Keber & Oliver Zöllner (eds.), Digitale Ethik: Leben in vernetzten Welten, Reclam. pp. 219-233. 2019.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…Read more
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Der zwanglose Zwang des "Always on": Informationsdruck, soziale Vernetzung und das neue Bild des Menschen in der DigitalitätIn Petra Grimm, Tobias O. Keber & Oliver Zöllner (eds.), Digitale Ethik: Leben in vernetzten Welten, Reclam. pp. 76-89. 2019.This article is an introduction to the concept of dominion without a ruler, as is so often observable in digital contexts, i.e., the compulsion to be "always on" and to be constantly networking, leading to new norms and a new kind of relational subject position in the digital age.
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5Digitale Ethik: Positionsbestimmung und PerspektivenIn Petra Grimm, Tobias O. Keber & Oliver Zöllner (eds.), Digitale Ethik: Leben in vernetzten Welten, Reclam. pp. 9-26. 2019.An introduction to the field of digital ethics and to the textbook, "Digital Ethics: Living in Networked Worlds" (Digitale Ethik: Leben in vernetzten Welten).
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1Medien – Rituale – Jugend: Perspektiven auf Medienkommunikation im Alltag junger Menschen (edited book)Steiner. 2011.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 c…Read more
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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 underst…Read more
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2Gender im medienethischen Diskurs (edited book)Steiner. 2014.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 representa…Read more
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Ökonomisierung der Wertesysteme: Der Geist der Effizienz im mediatisierten Alltag (edited book)Steiner. 2015."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 wa…Read more
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Anonymität und Transparenz in der digitalen Gesellschaft (edited book)Steiner. 2015.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, whil…Read more
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11Digitalisierung und SelbstbestimmungTv Diskurs 20 (1 (#75)): 22-25. 2016.This article gives an overview of how living in digitality relates to human autonomy, and what future outlines of this relationship may look like.
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Jugendschutz, Digitalisierung und Ethik: Selbstbestimmt im Netz als "Digitalitätsbürger"Jugendhilfe 57 (3): 299-304. 2019.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…Read more
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Gewalthaltige und propagandistische Inhalte im Netz: Unsere Verantwortung zur ZivilitätIn Petra Grimm & Klaus Koziol (eds.), Der ver-wertete Mensch: Vom Wandel des digitalen Lebens, Kopaed. pp. 85-109. 2018.This book chapter gives an overview of violent and propagandistic content to be found online, analyzes them from the perspective of digital ethics, and offers readers ways of dealing with harmful content based on ethical decisions of their own.
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Digitales Leben: Wer bin ich?In Petra Grimm & Klaus Koziol (eds.), Der ver-wertete Mensch: Vom Wandel des digitalen Lebens, Kopaed. pp. 27-45. 2018.This book chapter introduces readers to the concept of identity in digital contexts, and generally to the concept of digital ethics.
Oliver Zöllner
Stuttgart Media University
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
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Stuttgart Media UniversityProfessor
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Heinrich Heine University DüsseldorfHonorary Professor (Part-time)
Düsseldorf, NRW, Germany
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy, Misc |
Value Theory |
Other Academic Areas |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy, Misc |
Philosophical Traditions |
Value Theory |
Other Academic Areas |