570 internet researchers from all over the world met at the conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR2016)in Berlin. According to the theme “Internet Rules!”, they discussed regulations of the Internet, how power structures as well as making and breaking rules work online and what challenges occur for the society. The conference, which took place in Germany for the first time, was hosted by the Hans-Bredow-Institut and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG).
For four days, the participants of the AoIR discussed what rules and regulations the Internet needs. The topics ranged from ethics in digitalisation, data protection and the regulation of platforms to effects of social media on political decision-making. The keynote “The Platform Society” was given by Prof. Dr. José van Dijck of the University of Amsterdam.
One highlight of the conference was the public panel discussion “Who Rules the Internet?“ on October 6 in the lecture hall of the Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Kate Crawford (Microsoft Research), Fieke Jansen (Tactical Tech) and Carolin Gerlitz (Universität Siegen) discussed power structures and regulatory structures on the Internet at this panel.
Plenary Panel: Who Rules the Internet?
The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) aims at exploring the dynamic relationship between the Internet and society. It seeks to understand the interplay between social-cultural, legal, economic and technical norms in the process of digitalisation, and thus, form the basis for the dialogue of different interest groups of politics, business and society. The changes in the area of conflict of governance and innovation is the basic framework for the research. The interrelation shows many varieties and forms structures that have an effect in all areas of society and economic sectors: government and administration, businesses and markets and in different groups of civil society, from the local to the global level. The HIIG was founded in 2011 by the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), the University of the Arts Berlin (UdK) and the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB), in alliance with the Hans-Bredow-Institut as an integrated co-operation partner.