PhD students (first phase)

Deliberation, Emotional Communication and Opinion Dynamics in Online Discussions

With regard to design, quality and results of internet-based citizen deliberation the question arises what kind of communication process produces outcomes like e. g. impartiality, agreement, increase of knowledge. The PhD project addresses this issue with a model of online deliberation where different communication elements get a place in the throughput level of the deliberation process. Features of argumentation, emotional expression, narrative and humor, as part of the deliberative communication, are extracted from knowledge of political theory and psychology and theoretically and empirically applied to online deliberation. In particular, their influence on reciprocity and the process of empathy is highlighted in the dynamic of deliberation and empirically tested using relational content analysis. The project provides implications for future research and practice which sees both, emotion and reason, as quality criteria of deliberation.

As a member of the PhD programme Online Participation, Katharina is conducting interdisciplinary research with Matthias Liebeck (computer science) by combining techniques and experience from both fields for the analysis of argumentative structures and the detection of emotions in text. Katharina and Matthias are currently adapting existing methods to the field of online participation and aim to develop new theoretical models and techniques for real-world deployment.

personal website

Katharina Esau studied Social Sciences (B. A.) and Political Communication (M. A.) at the Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf. In her master’s thesis she employed content analysis to investigate individualized campaign strategies on candidate websites. Her research interests include political communication and participation, deliberation and opinion formation under online conditions. Currently she is PhD candidate at the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf. Her supervisor is Prof. Christiane Eilders.

Publications (selection):

Katharina Esau (2015) Argument, Emotion, Narration, Humor und ihr Einfluss auf kommunikativen Anschluss in der Online-Deliberation, Doktorandenkolloquium der Fachgruppen CvK und Soziologie der Medienkommunikation der DGPuK

Katharina Esau, Matthias Liebeck (2015) Verbindung von manueller Inhaltsanalyse mit automatisierten Techniken zur Erkennung von Argumentationsstrukturen, 4. Jahrestreffen des Forschungsnetzwerkes Liquid Democracy

Katharina Esau, Josua Littig (2015) Das Netz der Andersdenkenden?, Die Politik auf dem Siegertreppchen. Beiträge des 10. Düsseldorfer Forum Politische Kommunikation, Beate Pohlers, Franca Schreiber, Ibrahim Ghubbar (ed.), p. 257-279, Berlin: Frank & Timme

Katharina Esau (2015) Argument, Narration, Emotion und Humor im Deliberationsprozess, 4. Jahrestreffen des Forschungsnetzwerkes Liquid Democracy

Katharina Esau, Dennis Frieß, Christiane Eilders (2016) Design Matters! An empirical analysis of online deliberation on different news platforms, The Internet, Policy & Politics Conference

Matthias Liebeck, Katharina Esau, Stefan Conrad (2016) What to Do with an Airport? Mining Arguments in the German Online Participation Project Tempelhofer Feld, Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Argumentation Mining, p. 144-153 pdf

Katharina Esau (2016) Emotionale und expressive Kommunikation in der Online-Deliberation, Jahrestagung der Fachgruppe "Kommunikation und Politik" der DGPuK

Dennis Frieß, Katharina Esau, Christiane Eilders (2017) Recent Perspectives on Online Deliberation, 67th Annual ICA Conference

Dennis Frieß, Katharina Esau, Christiane Eilders (2017) Deliberation follows Design. Eine Analyse der Einflüsse von Plattformdesign auf die Qualität von Nutzerkommentaren, 62. Jahrestagung der DGPuK

Katharina Esau, Dennis Frieß, Christiane Eilders (2017) Design Matters! An Empirical Analysis of Online Deliberation on Different News Platforms, Policy & Internet 9(3), p. 321-342, url, doi:10.1002/poi3.154 pdf

Matthias Liebeck, Katharina Esau, Stefan Conrad (2017) Text Mining für Online-Partizipationsverfahren: Die Notwendigkeit einer maschinell unterstützten Auswertung, HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik 54(4), p. 544-562, doi:10.1365/s40702-017-0321-6 pdf

Katharina Esau, Dennis Frieß, Christiane Eilders (2017) Emotionen, Narrationen und Humor im deliberativen Diskurs – Inhaltsanalyse von Nutzerkommentaren auf unterschiedlichen Online-Plattformen, Gemeinsame Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises "Politik und Kommunikation" der DVPW, der Fachgruppe "Kommunikation und Politik" der DGPuK und der Fachgruppe "Politische Kommunikation" SGKM pdf

Dennis Frieß, Katharina Esau, Christiane Eilders (2017) How Emotions, Humor and Narratives Interact with Traditional Characteristics of Deliberation Online, 67th Annual ICA Conference

Katharina Esau, Dennis Frieß, Christiane Eilders (2017) Design Matters! An Empirical Analysis of Online Deliberation on Different News Platforms, 67th Annual ICA Conference pdf

Katharina Esau, Matthias Liebeck, Christiane Eilders (2017) Mining Arguments in Online Participation: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen manueller und automatisierter Inhaltsanalyse zur Erhebung von Argumentkomponenten, Gemeinsame Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises "Politik und Kommunikation" der DVPW, der Fachgruppe "Kommunikation und Politik" der DGPuK und der Fachgruppe "Politische Kommunikation" SGKM pdf

Tobias Escher, Dennis Frieß, Katharina Esau, Jost Sieweke, Ulf Tranow, Simon Dischner, Philipp Hagemeister, Martin Mauve (2017) Online Deliberation in Academia: Evaluating the Quality and Legitimacy of Cooperatively Developed University Regulations, Policy & Internet 9(1), p. 133-164, url, doi:10.1002/poi3.119 pdf

Katharina Esau (2018) Capturing Citizens’ Values: On the Role of Narratives and Emotions in Digital Participation, Analyse & Kritik 40(1), p. 55-72, url

Dennis Frieß, Katharina Esau, Christiane Eilders (2018) Deliberation follows Design. Eine Analyse der Einflüsse des Plattformdesigns auf die Qualität von Nutzerkommentaren zu Nachrichtenartikeln, Vernetzung. Stabilität und Wandel gesellschaftlicher Kommunikation, Christiane Eilders, Olaf Jandura, Halina Bause, Dennis Frieß (ed.), p. 87-106, Köln: von Halem

Daniel Neugebauer

Formal models for the decription of online participation processes

Central research question: How can existing formal models from theoretical Computer Science be adapted or extended to appropriately describe processes in Online Participation, and what are the properties of such models?
There exists a variety of formal models at the intersection of Computer Science, Micro Economics and Social Choice Theory that investigate the interaction of individuals during processes such as voting, judgment aggregation, resource allocation or argumentation. Various quality criteria, which determine whether a formal process or a result is considered “good”, are defined and analyzed as to whether and how easily they can be fulfilled. The main research aim is to refine existing models such that they can represent as many features of real world participation processes as possible, for example enabling them to deal with dynamic updates, uncertainty or incomplete knowledge. The research is mostly not empirical, but analytical. Methods include mathematical modelling, algorithm design, proofs, and some programming.

personal website

Daniel Neugebauer studied Computer Science at Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf between 2009 and 2014. In his Master’s thesis he investigated methods to divide a heterogeneous, divisible resource among competing agents, looking at the special case of incomplete divisions. His research interests are in the field of game theory and computational social choice, with a focus on argumentation and formal reasoning. Within the graduate school “Online Partizipation” he aims at developing argumentation models that can be used to both describe and direct the structure of online argumentations. Daniel Neugebauer is a member of the Cryptology and Complexity Theory group at Heinrich-Heine University and is supervised by Prof. Dr. Jörg Rothe.

Publications (selection):

Dorothea Baumeister, Daniel Neugebauer, Jörg Rothe (2015) Verification in Attack-Incomplete Argumentation Frameworks, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory (ADT 2015) 9346, p. 341-358, Lexington: Springer Verlag, url, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-23114-3 pdf

Dorothea Baumeister, Daniel Neugebauer, Jörg Rothe, Hilmar Schadrack (2016) Verification in Incomplete Argumentation Frameworks, Sixth International Workshop on Computational Social Choice, p. 23, pdf pdf

Daniel Neugebauer (2017) Generating Defeasible Knowledge Bases from Real-World Argumentations using D-BAS, Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Advances In Argumentation in Artificial Intelligence, p. 105-110

Daniel Neugebauer, Hilmar Schadrack (2017) Analyse von Argumentationsstrukturen mit Bayesschen Bestätigungsmaßen, Judgment Aggregation meets Argumentation

Daniel Neugebauer (2018) DABASCO: Generating AF, ADF, and ASPIC+ Instances from Real-World Discussions, Seventh International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA’18), Sanjay Modgil, Katarzyna Budzynska, John Lawrence (ed.), p. 469-470, Warsaw: IOS Press, doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-906-5-469

Dorothea Baumeister, Daniel Neugebauer, Jörg Rothe (2018) Credulous and Skeptical Acceptance in Incomplete Argumentation Frameworks, 7th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA)

Dorothea Baumeister, Daniel Neugebauer, Jörg Rothe, Hilmar Schadrack (2018) Complexity of Verification in Incomplete Argumentation Frameworks, 32nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI’18), New Orleans, Luisiana, USA: AAAI Press

Hilmar Schadrack

Online participation by means of mathematic principles: abstract modelling and analysis

The central research question is:
How can we model Online-Participation formally/mathematically?
In the intersection of computer science, mathematic, and social sciences lies the interdisciplinary field of Computational Social Choice. Scientists from this field try to formalize elections, judgment aggregation, fair devision, argumentation
and much more. Then, those models are taken and investigated with tools of computer science to understand its phenomena better. Here, the usual approach is to find a mathematical model which is easy enough to be handled mathematically, but strong enough to represent the real world. Therefore, we first have to determine the important aspects of the real world we try to model. Online-Participation distinguishes itself from the known models through the need of a very high grade of uncertainty and a lot of dynamic processes, and is therefore a higly unexplored subfield. To solve the central research question, we will investigate the following questions:

What are the moste important cornerstones of discussions and argumentation in the frame of Online-Participation, and how can we formalize those correctly?
What models are known, and how can we use them?
What problems occur, where are the critical points, and how can we solve them satisfactorily?
How can we define properties of the new models/model extensions, and under which conditions are they fulfilled?

personal website

Hilmar Schadrack studied computer science (master) and mathematics (bachelor) at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. His theses were about game theory, and also the question of how to model dynamic elections with changing sets of voters and condidates. In the ‘Fortschrittskolleg’ he is mainly interested in deliberation. Hilmar Schadrack is writing his PhD thesis in computer science in the working group ‘Computational Social Choice’ of Jun.-Prof. Dr. Dorothea Baumeister at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, in close collaboration with the working group ‘Komplexitätstheorie und Kryptologie’ of Prof. Dr. Jörg Rothe.

Publications (selection):

Jérôme Lang, Anja Rey, Jörg Rothe, Hilmar Schadrack, Lena Schend (2015) Representing and Solving Hedonic Games with Ordinal Preferences and Thresholds, Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS’15), p. 1229-1237

Dorothea Baumeister, Jörg Rothe, Hilmar Schadrack (2015) Verification in Argument-Incomplete Argumentation Frameworks, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory (ADT 2015) 9346, p. 359-376, Lexington: Springer Verlag, url, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-23114-3 pdf

Daniel Neugebauer, Hilmar Schadrack (2017) Analyse von Argumentationsstrukturen mit Bayesschen Bestätigungsmaßen, Judgment Aggregation meets Argumentation

Sabrina Schöttle

Sociology

Political Online-Participation among Gender – Men’s and Women’s Lack of Motivation?

If the internet has paved the way for low cost and low-threshold participation in politics and social decision-making processes, then why do there still exist gaps between social groups? Focusing on participants, this planned theoretical model is used to give a possible explanation for the potential gaps in political participation among social groups; especially between women and men in institutionalized and subsequently in new forms of politics like in online-participation. It is examined, which reasoning factors of the classic participation theories such as the SES-explanatory model by Brady et al. (1994) can be applied to online-participation. Hypotheses regarding online-participation will be formed based on the theoretical models explaining traditional forms of participation. Gender is only one among many factors influencing participation and relates to factors like education or income. Additionally, factors like access to the internet, effort or requirements like civic- or computer skills are expected to make differences between offline- and online-participation. Moreover, the mobilization thesis and the reinforcement thesis (Norris 2001) will be regarded as well. The developed hypotheses will be examined empirically: the reasons for these potential and existing differences between men and women will be considered. Possible cause-effect relationships will be concluded from data of online-participation-processes in Germany and in North Rhine-Westphalia. Results of this research could be substantial for building a theoretical model explaining lacks for motivation of men and women. Furthermore gaps in (online-)participation between social groups can be considered from a different angle.

personal website

Sabrina Schoettle studied political science and german literature at RWTH Aachen University (B.A.) and social science at Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf (M.A.). She gained experience as a tutor in methods of social science and statistics and as student auxiliary force at the Chair for Sociology II / Prof. Dr. Ulrich Rosar during her studies. The subject of her master thesis is called “Role Models and Stereotypes through the Ages of the last 50 Years – Women, Household Chores and Employment. An Empirical Longitudinal Study”. Her research focus is on online-participation, methods of social science, gender studies, sociology of prejudice and social inequality. Being member of the PhD programme Online Participation, her research interests are on participation, evaluation and gender equality. Sabrina Schoettle is conducting her PhD in sociology at Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf and her supervisor is Prof. Ulrich Rosar.

Publications (selection):

Sabrina Schöttle (2015) Online-Partizipation, Motivations- und Erfolgsfaktoren aus Perspektive der Nutzerinnen und Nutzer, 4. Jahrestreffen des Forschungsnetzwerkes Liquid Democracy

Sabrina Schöttle, Malte Steinbach (2016) Monitor Online-Partizipation NRW – Ergebnisse der Erhebung von Online-Bürgerbeteiligungsverfahren in den Kommunen Nordrhein-Westfalens, Symposium „Online-Partizipation“ 2016, Gelsenkirchen: NRW Fortschrittskolleg Online-Partizipation

Nadja Wilker, Sabrina Schöttle, Malte Steinbach, Theresa Witt, Peter Gladitz (2016) Monitor Online-Partizipation: Ein Drittel aller Städte und Gemeinden in NRW setzt E-Partizipation ein, eNewsletter Netzwerk Bürgerbeteiligung, p. 1-5

Sabrina Schöttle (2016) The Gender Gap in Political Online-Participation – New Chances and New Challenges for Social Equality, International Journal of Digital and Data Law 2, p. 119-128, url

Sabrina Schöttle (2016) Role Models and Stereotypes in Germany from 1962 until today - Women, Household Chores and Employment. An Empirical Longitudinal Study, ISA International Forum of Sociology

Sabrina Schöttle (2016) Online-Participation among Social Groups - Men’s and Women’s Lack for Motivation?, IPSA, 24th World Congress of Political Science

Sabrina Schöttle (2016) Frauen, Männer und Online-Partizipation - Neue Chancen und Herausforderungen, Arbeitskreis "Dialog schafft Zukunft", Servicestelle für Beteiligung in NRW

Sabrina Schöttle (2016) Political Participation among Gender - Men's and Women's Lack for Motivation?, CIEG International Congress on Gender Studies

Sabrina Schöttle (2016) The Gender-Gap in Political Online-Participation, International Symposium on Citizen Participation and Collaboration in Promoting Open Government, Paris: Université Paris Panthéon Sorbonne

Sabrina Schöttle (2017) Motivating and Influencing Factors on E-Participation on Local Level - Who Participates why?, Workshop on New Participatory Spaces: Insights from state and social movement practices

Sabrina Schöttle (2017) Motivating and Influencing Factors on E-Participation on Local Level - Who Participates why?, IPSA CICOM 33

Sabrina Schöttle (2017) Influencing Factors on E-Participation on Local Level - Who Participates Why?, CeDEM17: Proceedings of the International Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government 2017, Peter Parycek, Noella Edelmann (ed.), p. 113-118

Saskia Wilhelmy, Vasilija Rolfes, Michael Grözinger, Yvonne Chikere, Sabrina Schöttle, Dominik Groß (2017) Knowledge and attitudes on electroconvulsive therapy in Germany: A web based survey, Psychiatry Research, url, doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2017.09.015

Sabrina Schöttle (2017) Emanzipation heute – Gleichberechtigung. Gleichstellung. Gleichmachung? Ein Expertinnengespräch zum internationalen Frauentag., StattBlatt Verlag (Ausgabe April), p. 24

Peter Gladitz, Sabrina Schöttle, Malte Steinbach, Nadja Wilker, Theresa Witt (2017) DIID Monitor Online-Partizipation - Zum Stand von Online-Bürgerbeteiligung in den Kommunen Nordrhein-Westfalens, KommunalPraxis Wahlen 8(1), p. 30-34

Malte Steinbach

Business Administration

The institutionalisation of online participation in municipal administrations

In his dissertation, Malte Steinbach will analyze the implementation and institutionalization of Online-Participation in local public administrations from an organizational perspective. Frequently, public administrations as central municipal actors are organizing public participation projects and have also been termed the birthplace of participation processes (online and offline). Furthermore, they are confronted with a wide array of possibilities regarding the communication via social media. Local public administrations are momentarily adapting to these developments by incorporating new ideals and practices of open government. How new administrative mindsets and behaviors form on organizational (e.g. through changing strategies and structures) as well as on individual level (e.g. through changing roles and identities) will be analyzed in his dissertation.

Legal preconditions for binding municipal online participation in NRW

personal website

Malte Steinbach studied Geography, Urban Planning and Economics at the University of Bonn. In his master thesis he analyzed e-participation efforts on the municipal level. Using the example of Bonn, he looked at different stakeholder groups engaged in urban development, their different perspectives, practices and use of e-participation. In the Fortschrittskolleg Malte is primarily interested in actors that implement and organize online-participation. He is doing his doctorate at the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Organization Studies and Human Resource Management and Prof. Stefan Süß is his supervisor.

Publications (selection):

Malte Steinbach (2015) Online-Partizipation und öffentliche Verwaltung: Ein Überblick über den Stand der Forschung, Workshop des NRW-Fortschrittskollegs „Online-Partizipation, Düsseldorf

Malte Steinbach (2015) E-Partizipation vor Ort!, Deutscher Kongress für Geographie 2015 „Stadt Land Schaf(f)t – Land Schaf(f)t Stadt, Berlin

Kathrin Diekmann, Malte Steinbach, Stefan Süß (2016) Innovative strategische Entscheidungsprozesse in Universitäten: Eine qualitative Analyse der Online-Partizipation am Beispiel der Neufassung von Promotions- und Habilitationsordnung, Arbeitskreis empirische Personal- und Organisationsforschung (AKempor)

Malte Steinbach, Stefan Süß (2016) The institutional dimensions of the e-participation innovation process - A qualitative analysis of institutional logics and work, EGPA Annual Conference and pre-conference PhD Symposium

Stefan Süß, Malte Steinbach, Franziska Fischer (2016) Online-Partizipation, Das Wirtschaftsstudium 45(6)

Malte Steinbach (2017) The relationship between municipal civil servants’ identities and their use of e-participation – Developing a person-centered research approach, Annual EGPA Conference

Malte Steinbach, Kathrin Diekmann, Stefan Süß (2017) Innovative decision-making processes in university-publics: A qualitative analysis of online-participation processes in examination regulation reforms, 33. European Group of Organizational Studies (EGOS) Kolloquium

Malte Steinbach (2017) Wie gelingt demokratische Beteiligung? Ziele - Nutzung - Bedingungen - neue Ansätze, 1. Demokratiekonferenz der Wuppertaler Initiative für Demokratie und Toleranz e.V.

Kathrin Diekmann, Malte Steinbach, Stefan Süß (2017) Innovative strategische Entscheidungsprozesse in Universitäten: Eine qualitative Analyse der Online-Partizipation am Beispiel der Neufassung von Promotions- und Habilitationsordnung, Wissenschaftliche Kommission Hochschulmanagement im Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaftslehre (WK HSM)

Kathrin Diekmann, Malte Steinbach, Stefan Süß (2017) Innovative strategische Entscheidungsprozesse in Universitäten: Eine qualitative Analyse der Online-Partizipation am Beispiel der Neufassung von Promotions- und Habilitationsordnung, Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Hochschulforschung (GfHf)

Malte Steinbach, Stefan Süß (2017) The institutional aspects of the e-participation innovation process – A qualitative analysis of institutional logics and institutional work, 41. Workshop der Wissenschaftlichen Kommission Organisation (WK ORG) im Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaftslehre

Kathrin Diekmann, Malte Steinbach, Stefan Süß (2017) Innovative Entscheidungsprozesse in Universitäten: Eine qualitative Analyse der Online-Partizipation am Beispiel der Neufassung von Promotions- und Habilitationsordnung, der moderne staat - dms 10(2), p. 317-340

Malte Steinbach, Stefan Süß (2018) Administrators' identities and strategies in the e-participation innovation process - A qualitative analysis of institutional logics and institutional work in German municipalities, Information Polity 23(3), p. 281-305

Thomas Weiler

Law

HSPV

Thomas Weiler does his research at the Univeristy of Applied Sciences for Public Administration on the legal aspects of binding municipal online-participation in NRW. He will classify various forms of participation with a binding character and the constitutional and legal parameters that have to be kept.

personal website

Thomas Weiler studied law, political science, contemporary history and scandinavian studies at the University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken; Lund, Sweden; and the University of Bonn, Germany. After his 1st state examn with a focus on European Law he worked as associate professor in Bonn and Greifswald. In 1999-200 he was a “visiting fellow” at the Dept. of Government at Harvard University. He then did his legal clerkship (Referendariat), e.g. at the Consulate General in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. and after the 2nd examn was admitted to the bar in 2002. He started teaching also at the University of Applied Sciences for Public Administration in NRW with a focus on Constitutional and European Law. His thesis is supervised by Prof. Frank Bätge and Prof. Martin Morlok (HHU Düsseldorf) in the law department of the HSPV Köln.

Publications (selection):

Thomas Weiler (2015) Können elektronische Wahlen verfassungsmäßig sein?, KommunalPraxis Wahlen 6(1), p. 7-19

Frank Bätge, Thomas Weiler, Theresa Witt (2016) Rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen elektronischer Partizipation, Symposium „Online-Partizipation“ 2016, Gelsenkirchen: NRW Fortschrittskolleg Online-Partizipation

Thomas Weiler (2016) Constitutional Parameters for E-Voting in Germany, 6th ECPR Graduate Student Conference

Theresa Witt

Law

Consulting citizens via the Internet. Do we need a legal framework for non-binding online-participation?

At first sight, it might seem unnecessary to even think about any kind of legal regulation for legally non-binding online-participation processes (e.g. deliberation platforms, where citizens can discuss regional political topics). After all, one might argue that the results of such processes do not constitute any liabilities for administrative bodies or politicians, but merely aim at noncommittal public consultation. This conclusion is somewhat shortsighted. It does not take into account that those processes (although legally non-binding) can unfold strong factual effects (e.g. bringing a topic on the political agenda, increasing public pressure, media attention, etc.). Consequently – if not de jure, then de facto – they can create obligations for decision makers to take certain actions. This thesis reveals the importance of legally non-binding participation and shows the relevance of the research question at hand. In the era of digitalization, this is especially applicable for online-participation. Although there are several recommendations, regional standards and general practice-guidelines, these often lack theoretical foundations and cannot provide legal certainty. Key aspects for this field of research are on one hand the theoretical principles, e. g. the continuum of direct and representative democracy. On the other hand, concrete matters are critical for the analysis. Should for example a politician be allowed to unlimitedly take part in an online discussion without identifying his position? How much influence on the process (moderation, etc.) is necessary and what is ultimately acceptable?

Organizational Learning in Municipalities and Universities – Empirical Studies of Public Sector Organizations‘ Use of Online-Participation

personal website

Theresa Witt studied law at Heinrich-Heine-University (HHU) Düsseldorf and passed the first state examination in May, 2015. Her major field of study was international and European law. During her studies, she worked as a student assistant at the Chair of Public Law, Legal Theory & Legal Sociology (faculty of law, HHU) for two years. In this period, especially being involved in the process of writing, editing, updating and commenting on juridical texts deepened her affinity to constitutional and state law. In her doctoral thesis, she addresses top-down initiated, legally non-binding online-participation processes. Her main research question is whether – and if so, in which extent – such processes need to meet legal standards or should be regulated, although they do not produce legally binding results. Her dissertation is supervised by Prof. Martin Morlok.

Publications (selection):

Theresa Witt (2016) Legally Non-Binding Citizen Consultation via the Internet. An End in itself or One Step Closer to the Democratic Ideal?, International Journal of Digital and Data Law 2, p. 129-144

Theresa Witt (2017) Rechtliche Grundlagen von Online-Partizipation. Das Internet als Demokratie-Katalysator?, Digitalisierung und Recht. Tagung des Vereins Junge Wissenschaft im Öffentlichen Recht in der Bucerius Law School am 26. November 2016, Anika Klafki, Felix Würkert, Tina Winter (ed.), p. 37-62, Hamburg: Tredition

Alumni

Kathrin Diekmann

Business Administration

HHU (until 07/2018)

Katharina Diekmann has been a PhD student until the end of June 2018. The cumulative dissertation project was focused on the use and implementation of online-participation (OP) in local public administrations and universities through an organizational perspective.

Acceptance of online participation processes in municipal administrations

From 2010 to 2013 B.A.-studies in social sciences at Ruhr-University Bochum, NRW, Germany. From 2013 to 2015 M.A.-studies in social sciences with focus on socio-scientific empirical research methods, at Ruhr-University Bochum, as well. During the M.A.-studies foundation of a project (“Studentische Forschungswerkstatt”) to teach students how to work with qualitative socio-scientific research methods. After the M.A.-studies employed at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld, NRW, Germany, doing project evaluation. Till June 2018 she worked as scientific staff at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf at the chair Business Administration, in particular Organization Studies and Human Resource Management. She was supervised by Prof. Stefan Süß.

Publications (selection):

Kathrin Diekmann (2017) Civil servants' competencies for the use of internet-based participatory budgets, Annual EGPA Conference

Kathrin Diekmann, Malte Steinbach, Stefan Süß (2017) Innovative strategische Entscheidungsprozesse in Universitäten: Eine qualitative Analyse der Online-Partizipation am Beispiel der Neufassung von Promotions- und Habilitationsordnung, Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Hochschulforschung (GfHf)

Franziska Fischer

Business Administration

HHU (until 12/2015)

Franziska Fischer has been a PhD student until the end of 2015. Since January 2016 she has moved on to work at our partner institution, the city of Wuppertal, in the department for citizen participation.

Peter Gladitz

Political Science

HSPV (until 10/2016)

Peter Gladitz has been a PhD student until October 2016. Within the PhD programme Online Participation he addressed the perspective of political and administrative stakeholders on participation processes. Peter Gladitz also worked on the Monitor Online-Participation.

Peter Gladitz studied communication and political sciences (B.A.) at the University of Erfurt and political communication (M.A.) at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In between the two degrees he worked for one year at the think tank of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP, Berlin) and at the General Secretariat of the Franco-German Youth Office (FGYO, Paris). In his master’s thesis he analysed the presentation of political negotiation processes in TV formats. Focusing parliament, he therefore compared information oriented and entertainment oriented formats and their cultivation potential. Thus his research interests cover online communication and participation as well as the mediation of politics, especially through entertainment. Peter Gladitz’s dissertation took place in the field of political science and got supervised by Prof. Katrin Möltgen (HSPV) and Prof. Stefan Marschall (HHU).

Tobias Krauthoff

A dialogue-based approach for discussions of online-participation

HHU (until 06/2018)

Research question: Can a dialogue-based approach improve the success of online-participation compared with the state of the art?
In the context of the promotion a new prototype was implemented, which can be described as dynamically Wahl-O-Mat: participants are guided through a discussion and confronted with statements of other participants. During the time-shifted dialogue, existing statements can be edited and new arguments can be added. In order to ensure transparency, the data and algorithms can be observed through the whole process. By the dialogue-based approach discussion complexity is reduced and at the same time scalability is guaranteed. Additionally, in his PhD thesis the prototype and the state of the art were evaluated.

From late 2009 till 2014 Tobias Krauthoff studied computer science at the Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf with the minor subject of mathematics. In 2012 he received the bachelor degree whereby he focused on computer networks and communications. As a result of his bachelor’s thesis, the officially, mobile application for the Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf has been founded. In November 2014 he received the degree of master of science with distinction, where the master’s thesis was about “Measurement of Position-based Network-Characteristics in Cellular Networks while Moving”. Since 2014 Tobias Krauthoff was scientist at the chair of Technology of Social Networks under the leadership of Jun.-Prof. Dr. Kalman Graffi. His focus was on deliberation and its technical implementations.

Publications (selection):

Tobias Krauthoff, Michael Baurmann, Gregor Betz, Martin Mauve (2016) Dialog-Based Online Argumentation, Proceedings of the 2016 conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA 2016), Potsdam: IOS Press pdf

Tobias Krauthoff (2017) Kann ein dialogbasierter Ansatz den Erfolg von Online-Partizipation gegenüber bestehenden Ansätzen signifikant verbessern?, Local Politics and Citizen’s Participation, Gummersbach: Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit

Tobias Krauthoff, Christian Meter, Martin Mauve (2017) Dialog-Based Online Argumentation: Findings from a Field Experiment, Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Advances in Argumentation in Artificial Intelligence, p. 85-99, CEUR-WS pdf

Christian Meter, Tobias Krauthoff, Martin Mauve (2017) discuss: Embedding Dialog-Based Discussions into Websites, HCI International 2017, Social Computing for Social Change, pdf pdf

Tobias Krauthoff, Christian Meter, Michael Baurmann, Gregor Betz, Martin Mauve (2018) D-BAS – A Dialog-Based Online Argumentation System, 7th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA), Sanjay Modgil, Katarzyna Budzynska, John Lawrence (ed.), p. 325-336, Warsaw: IOS Press, doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-906-5-325 pdf

Christian Meter, Tobias Krauthoff, Alexander Schneider (2018) Dialogbasierte Online-Diskussionen, Deutsche Verwaltungspraxis

Matthias Liebeck

Discussion analysis in online participation processes

HHU (until 12/2018)

Matthias Liebeck’s leading research question for his PhD thesis was: “How can qualitative evaluations of text content in online participation processes be supported by an automatic analysis, taking into account the problems in practice?” He developed automated methods for the evaluation of text content in online participation processes by using and enhancing text mining and natural language processing techniques. Matthias focused on the identification of argumentative structures (e.g. pro and contra stances) in text content.

Public Participation via Internet from the Perspective of Local Councillors

As a member of the PhD programme Online Participation, Matthias conducted interdisciplinary research with Katharina Esau (Communication and Media Studies) by combining techniques and experience from both fields for the analysis of argumentative structures and the detection of emotions in text. Katharina and Matthias were adapting existing methods to the field of online participation and developed new theoretical models and techniques for real-world deployment.

personal website

Matthias Liebeck studied computer science and mathematics at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In this master’s thesis titled ‘Automated Analysis of Opinion Making by Discussion Tracing in Social Media’, he worked on methods for the automated analysis of topics and tonality of user comments in a German news portal and in an online participation process. As a junior software developer, he gained multiple years of experience in web development with ASP.Net / C# in a local IT company. His primary research interest was the automated analysis of text content in online participation processes. Matthias Liebeck was a PhD student at the Databases and Information Systems group of the Institute of Computer Science and was supervised by Prof. Stefan Conrad.

Publications (selection):

Matthias Liebeck (2015) Aspekte einer automatischen Meinungsbildungsanalyse von Online-Diskussionen, Beitragsband des Studierendenprogramms der 16. GI-Fachtagung Datenbanksysteme für Business, Technologie und Web (BTW 2015)

Matthias Liebeck, Stefan Conrad (2015) IWNLP: Inverse Wiktionary for Natural Language Processing, Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 7th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (Volume 2: Short Papers), p. 414-418, Beijing, China: Association for Computational Linguistics, url pdf

Matthias Liebeck (2015) Ansätze zur Erkennung von Kommunikationsmodi in Online-Diskussionen, Proceedings of the 27th GI-Workshop Grundlagen von Datenbanken, Gunter Saake, David Broneske, Sebastian Dorok, Andreas Meister (ed.), p. 42-47, Gommern: CEUR-WS.org, pdf

Matthias Liebeck, Pashutan Modaresi, Alexander Askinadze, Stefan Conrad (2016) Pisco: A Computational Approach to Predict Personality Types from Java Source Code. Working notes of FIRE 2016, Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation pdf

Pashutan Modaresi, Matthias Liebeck, Stefan Conrad (2016) Neural Classification of Linguistic Coherence using Long Short-Term Memories. Proceedings of the 8th Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation, FIRE 2016, Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation pdf

Matthias Liebeck, Pashutan Modaresi, Stefan Conrad (2016) Evaluating Safety, Soundness and Sensibleness of Obfuscation Systems, CLEF Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum pdf

Matthias Liebeck, Philipp Pollack, Pashutan Modaresi, Stefan Conrad (2016) HHU at SemEval-2016 Task 1: Multiple Approaches to Measuring Semantic Textual Similarity, Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval 2016) pdf

Pashutan Modaresi, Matthias Liebeck, Stefan Conrad (2016) Exploring the Effects of Cross-Genre Machine Learning for Author Profiling in PAN 2016, CLEF 2016 Evaluation Labs and Workshop – Working Notes Paper pdf

Roland Kahlert, Matthias Liebeck, Joseph Cornelius (2017) Understanding Trending Topics in Twitter, Datenbanksysteme für Business, Technologie und Web (BTW 2017) - Studierendenprogramm

Nadja Wilker

Political Science

HHU (until 11/2018)

Nadja Wilker analysed the perception and acceptance of public participation via Internet from the perspective of local councillors as representative decision makers. Local councillors are addressees as well as gate keepers of public participation as they decide about its implementation. At the same time, Internet-based public participation may influence the councillors’ scope of action and their relationship with the citizens. Against this background, Nadja Wilker examined if and how local councillors perceive such changes and how that is influenced by different role perceptions. As the main theoretical framework, she used and refined the role approach of legislative studies. Her empirical work was based on qualitative interviews and a representative survey amongst local councillors in the state of North Rhine Westphalia.