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Publication Access status: Open Access , Beyond Informed Consent: Consumer Data Preferences and the Case for Enforcement-Oriented Transparency(2026); Digital markets have fundamentally altered the conditions under which consumers engage with data-driven platforms, yet regulatory frameworks, particularly in the EU, continue to rely on consent-based models that presuppose a level of technological literacy and informed agency that most users do not possess. Drawing on existing empirical evidence from five studies across the US, UK, and EU, this paper departs from the empirical argument that consumer preferences regarding personal data are highly unstable and shaped by framing and trust rather than genuine, well-formed values. Consumers systematically overestimate the privacy protections offered by paid services, accept personalization without understanding its commercial scope, and disregard privacy notices regardless of their clarity. This argument exposes the structural failure of transparency-as-disclosure as a regulatory strategy: informing consumers better does not fix markets distorted by asymmetric information and complex, layered business models. Rather than doubling down on consumer-facing transparency obligations, this paper proposes a shift toward enforcement-oriented business-model transparency, under which platforms would be required to disclose aspects such as data flows, monetization strategies, but also algorithmic processes to regulatory authorities and civil society. The Digital Services Act and the General Data Protection Regulation already point somewhat in this direction. Building on this logic, the paper proposes further machine-readable transparency as a complement to existing information obligations.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:411 5 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , Medienepistemologie sympoietischer Weltbezüge. Zur Kritik eines ikonisch-humanistischen Anthropozentrismus(2026)The article examines the epistemic conditions of human world relations in the Anthropocene by adopting a media-philosophical perspective on the interplay between anthropocentrism, visuality, and the medial figurations of epistemic premises. It departs from the diagnosis of a disrupted communication between humans and their environment(s), a disruption rooted in a humanistically grounded anthropocentric worldview. This worldview manifests not only in practices of distancing objectification and universalization but also in medial forms through which “world” becomes visible and thinkable. Using the Blue Marble—NASA’s popular photograph of Earth—as a case study, the article analyzes how an icon of planetary wholeness stabilizes the epistemic architecture of a quasi-cosmic observer standpoint. The image generates a normative holism that brackets the processual, conflictual, and situated character of terrestrial relations, thereby reproducing a hierarchical relation between observer and observed. In the objectification and utilitarian reduction of the Earth, the same circular logic of control is reiterated—one that has contributed to the ecological disruptions characteristic of the Anthropocene. Against this iconic totalization, the article proposes a sympoietic approach that foregrounds the participation of non-human actors in world-making and conceptualizes media as instruments for rendering their forces and agencies perceptible. Media are thus understood as partial, relational, and processual actors. A media epistemology of sympoietic world relations makes it possible to conceive mediality beyond the ideals of a god-like observer position: as a situated, dependent, and co-produced mode of being-in-the-world. In doing so, the article sketches an epistemic model that does not seek to transcend the centrality of the human in thought, but rather aims to situate human existence within the relational entanglements between humans and their environment(s).Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:4028 57 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , „The Amazon for Drone Warfare“: Zur Plattformisierung der Drohnenkriegsführung im Russisch-Ukrainischen Krieg(2026); Russia’s war in Ukraine has been marked by both parties’ extensive use of drones. While the early phases of the war saw the development of what we have called Consumer Drone Warfare, that is, the use of off-the-shelf or ready-to-fly drones provided by large manufacturers like DJI or Autel, there has been a notable shift towards locally assembled First-Person-View or FPV Drones in recent times. We argue that this development is made possible by – and in turn fuels – the platformization of warfare by the Ukrainian military. In this article, we trace three distinct but interwoven sites of platformization: 1) the modular FPV drone itself, understood as a military platform for sensor and weapon systems; 2) the Delta System, an ecosystem of applications for planning and cooperatively executing drone strikes; 3) and the Brave1 Market, a logistics platform connecting military units to equipment and weapon manufacturers which has been dubbed “the Amazon for Drone Warfare.” In doing so, we will show that platformized drone warfare reshapes and economizes processes of military organization and procurement according to the logics of markets and gamification. As they render the chain of operations from drone development to battlefield deployment (ac)countable, Delta and Brave1 are designed to facilitate quality control and self-organization vis-a-vis an increasing number of military tech start-ups and heterogenous hardware parts. We posit that the infrastructures for drone development and data collection established by platformized FPV drone warfare act as stepping stones towards (semi-)autonomous forms of drone warfare powered by machine learning and AI systems.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:391 1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , Prototyp „Bundle Explorer: Berühren“(2026)The Bundle Explorer: Touch is the prototype of a praxeological research platform for studying situated practices. Its conceptualization draws upon Wittgenstein’s work and his method of grammatical investigation. With its pool of diverse filmic ‘prepared specimens’ from the research project Early Childhood and Smartphone, the tool facilitates a comparative, probing, and contouring procedure that opens up new perspectives on touch practices in digital everyday life. This working paper recounts the context and process of the Bundle Explorer’s development, and outlines how to work with it. Considering grammatical investigation (Wittgenstein), praxeological bundle theory (drawing on Schatzki), and camera ethnography alongside one another, the paper develops methodological proposals for ways to address the following questions: How can a language-game analysis be deployed to study nonverbal practices, and how can bundle theory serve to discern how practices are situated? How can we bring Schatzki’s flat ontology together with Wittgensteinian thought, and to what extent can Wittgenstein’s übersichtliche Darstellung be seen as an experimental field that transcends medial and cultural boundaries? How could presentational grammar work? In this paper, the term ‘touch’ stands as a proxy for changing semantic fields in changing lifeworlds.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:383 4 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , Research with/in Communities: Fissures and Practices for an Anthropology Otherwise(2025)This paper pushes for a reframing of Anthropology as a collaborative and situated practice grounded in relationships rather than extraction. Using the metaphor of the fissure (raja) as both concept and method, it explores how research with/in communities unsettles disciplinary boundaries and challenges the coloniality of knowledge production. The text proposes a constellation of orientations -decolonial vigilance, feminist reflexivity, embodied attention, sensory attunement, and ontological openness- that operate as ethical and political commitments rather than fixed techniques. Through examples that traverse various disciplines, it shows how different media can be reimagined as tools for collective inquiry and transformation. The paper concludes by calling for creativity, solidarity and hope in order to sustain plural, accountable, and co-created forms of knowledge.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:3716 92 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , Sensorische Praktiken im Smart Home. Erkenntnisse und methodische Reflexion einer interdisziplinären PilotstudieThe working paper presents, as a proof of concept, initial findings from an interdisciplinary pilot study that employs methods from sociological and linguistic media research to investigate how everyday household practices are represented and transformed through smart, sensor-based media technologies, which can be observed as multimodal interactions. Within the framework of the project “B06 – Un-/Desired Observation in Interaction: Smart Environments, Language, Body, and Senses in Private Households” in the Collaborative Research Center “Media of Cooperation”, the domestication of smart technologies is examined as a case of the cooperative production of media and data—both with and without consent (Star and Griesemer 1989).The focus of the presented pilot study is on human-machine cooperation, in which the more or less noticeable capture of behavioral and environmental data by sensors contributes to the semi-automated shaping of household ecologies and processes. We reconstruct and analyze forms of interaction and communication with interfaces of these modern technologies, as well as the sensory orientations and bodily practices of users. Furthermore, we examine the spatial and material arrangements that are essential for the social and communicative organization, as well as the purposiveness and goal-directedness of socio-technical actions involving these devices. We present exploratory media-sociological and media-linguistic analyses of a living environment equipped with smart devices, exemplified by two specific devices: an Amazon Echo Show (10th gen.), a ‘rotating’ smart speaker with a voice user interface, camera, display, video/touch screen, and camera-based motion detection, and a smart, internet-connected air fryer. The study demonstrates that users are embedded in human-machine interaction through their human sensorium—both socio-cognitively and physically—and are challenged in situ to make various decisions.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:3682 145 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , Kontrapunkte setzen: Digitale Politische Bildung mit ContraPoints(2023)Der Text fragt nach den Potenzialen kreativer Formate Politischer Bildung in digitalen Kontexten. Stiftungen, Institutionen und Vlogger:innen haben in den letzten Jahren angesichts des Rechtsrucks auf Plattformen neue Formate der Politischen Bildung geschaffen. Diese wollen präventiv und intervenierend in rechte Diskurse, Trolling, Fake News und Co. eingreifen. Anhand des Youtube-Kanals ContraPoints werden informelle Formate der politischen Bildung im Bereich der Gender und Queer Studies besprochen. Es handelt sich dabei um videoessayistische Gegenformate, die darauf abzielen, rechte Metapolitiken zu entlarven und zu erkennen. Sie produzieren Bildungsformate, die nicht nur inhaltlich und informativ, sondern auch ästhetisch und affektiv anknüpfen. Im Zentrum dieses Textes steht die Formatspezifik der politischen Bildung von ContraPoints, die hier im Anschluss an Donna Haraway als situiertes Wissen verstanden wird.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:352 2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , Co-teaching postdigital ethnography(2023); It is rare to find innovative, engaging, hierarchy-defying and, above all, precise descriptions of teaching exercises that are suitable for teaching complex theory and methodological approaches that are as multi-layered as post-digital ethnography. Those that exist are mostly scattered across a few non-specific blogs and private Twitter feeds – finding them is a matter of an obscure combination of serendipity and algorithms. In this working paper we reflect on our co-teaching methods applied in a Masterclass on post-digital ethnography. Our aim is twofold: not only to reflect on teaching methods in post-digital ethnography, but also to present concrete examples of implementation in teaching and co-teaching constellations by means of teaching exercises.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:34637 967 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , Unboxing Spain's colonial past in the Rif(2023)In the Northern Moroccan city of Al Hoceima, Spanish and Moroccan his- tory of the 20th and twenty-first century converge. The protracted anti-/colonial war fought between parties from both territories gave rise to the bloody Spanish Civil War and Francoist dictatorship and formed a basis for post-independence mi- litary oppression in the Rif uprisings 1958/59. A growing body of ethnographic work focuses on memory work on both topics in this area from Moroccan perspectives and with eyes on oppressed subjects (Aixelà-Cabré 2022, Nahhass 2022). Drawing on recent work on ‘implicated subjects’ (Rothberg 2019), I argue that it is also ne- cessary to consider ongoing trans-Mediterranean and Spanish memory activism in order to fully understand the workings and duress of colonialism in Spain and Nort- hern Morocco. To that end, the following paper analyzes archival practices about colonial Alhucemas and postcolonial Hoceima surrounding one private collection among this last generation of Spanish colonizers. It builds on fieldwork I conducted among former Spanish residents of Al Hoceima. As children and young adults, they grew up in relative colonial freedom under the totalitarian Franco regime. As adults, they witnessed two transitions: the transition to Moroccan independence 1956 and the transition to Spanish democracy from 1978 onwards, and many of them engage in collecting practices surrounding these transitions. This paper outlines how objects circulate in and out of one of their archives and how publics congregate around them. Through the objects, Former Residents, Spanish institutions, Spanish and Rif- fian actors become actors and publics who enter in relationships of co-operation without consensus about a shared narrative of perpetrators, victims and history at large. Three contested issues are made to travel through the analyzed collection: a continuously invoked notion of convivencia, (architectural) traces of a colonial past in the Hoceima cityscape and administrative and social secrets of mutual surveil- lance. I am interested in how these issues form part of a boundary infrastructure of memory work between Spain and Hoceima (Star and Griesemer 1989, Star and Bowker 2017, Schubert 2017). This working paper will serve as an intermediary step to explore competing and shared notions of victimhood, forms of co-operation and the creation of transborder publics around the entangled histories of life on both shores of the Mediterranean.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:332 2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Publication Access status: Open Access , Defining digitalities III(2023); In this working paper we explore an alternative thread in the early development of media and medium as concepts: the origins of the idea of the storage medium in digital computing practices and communities of the 1940s and 1950s. While such practices were obscure at the time, they laid the technological foundation for today’s range of digital media. We discuss digitality as a feature of the practices used to read and write symbols from a medium, not a physical property of the medium itself. We then move on to a discussion of the alphabet as itself digital, grounded in the work of Nelson Goodman. Engaging with the contributions of Matthew Kirschenbaum, we explore the limited interchangeability of representations between different encodings of the same symbols, connecting the purported immateriality of digitality to this actual fungibility of material representations.Source Type:BookSeries:Working paper series / SFB 1187 Medien der KooperationVolume number:32542 342
