Human | Data | Society

The digital transformation of the last decades has increasingly turned our society into a data society. Data processes very much shape our social reality, while social reality, in turn, triggers these technical processes. In the context of Human | Data | Society, researchers aim to rethink these processes of datafication and digitalization. The focus is clearly on humans and studying the socio-technical relationships connecting people, data and society.

The research network employs a transdisciplinary approach to examine media-cultural, social, legal, political, psychological and technical aspects of the data society. Our researchers from different fields bring together perspectives from cultural inquiry (including law, sociology and media studies), behavioural science (including psychology and political science), and computer and information science.

A key part of the research priority is the Centre for Human | Data | Society at the University of Konstanz. Another central component is the Collaborative Research Centre SFB-TRR 161 "Quantitative Methods for Visual Computing". Human | Data | Society also benefits from Konstanz's transdisciplinary SFB initiative "Serious Gaming" examining the increasingly blurry boundaries between (digital and analogue) gaming and work, as well as from the interdisciplinary network initiative RuD focusing on the digitalization of law as well as digitalization by law.

In the area of teaching, the research priority dovetails with the "Advanced Data and Information Literacy Track" (ADILT) – a cross-disciplinary programme on data and information literacy for students in Konstanz – as well as the university's interdisciplinary teaching priority on law and digitalization.