TY - RPRT A1 - Breaugh, Jessica A1 - Hammerschmid, Gerhard A1 - Rackwitz, Maike A1 - Palaric, Enora T1 - Research Report on Collaborative Management for ICT Enabled Public Sector Innovation BT - Work Package 6 – Deliverable 6.4 N2 - The process of digitalising government is rapidly gaining speed, resulting in a pressing need for increased inter-governmental integration and challenging the traditional silo structures of government. This has sparked the adoption of inter-governmental collaborative working arrangements and efforts to develop joint standards and solutions; yet little is known about how exactly this manifests itself in the context of ambitious digitalisation projects. This report provides new empirical evidence on the challenges and dynamics of collaboration within and between public organisations in order to drive digital transformation. The report begins with a literature review on collaborative management with a particular focus on collaboration in the context of government digitalisation. This literature serves as a basis for developing a set of five propositions regarding how intergovernmental collaborative digitalisation projects can be best designed and managed. Following the conceptual framework of the TROPICO project deliverable 6.3 developed by Rackwitz et al. (2020), the report investigates the interplay between system context, collaboration challenges and dynamics (i.e. complexity, risk and power imbalances), public management interventions (i.e. institutional design and leadership) as well as outcomes. Emphasis is placed upon the role of institutional design and leadership in order to cope with the challenges inherent to collaborative governance approaches. The framework and related propositions are then verified through the use of empirical findings from ten comparative case studies from five European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, and the United Kingdom). The case studies, presented in detail in TROPICO deliverable 6.3, examine the development of national government-wide online portals, as well as the implementation of municipal Smart City initiatives. The cases show that the system dynamics and challenges of digitalisation projects, such as size and scope, tend to generate resource-intensive and demanding working conditions. Creating hybrid structures that incorporate both network and hierarchical approaches has been a common approach to handling these conditions and balancing the demands of inter-departmental collaboration with the inherent accountabilities and existing working cultures of public organisations. At the steering level, a central coordinator with collaborative leadership skills was found to be key to driving the projects forward and achieving outcomes. Participatory, network-style approaches at the working group level were successful in balancing the demands of all collaborative partners and encouraging wide-scale engagement. In addition, opting for wide-scale inclusion, setting ground rules and clear processes as well as a focus on trust and social capital development proved essential. While most leadership approaches still maintain elements of transactional leadership in managing projects, collaborative leadership approaches such as bringing stakeholders together, mediating problems, and guiding and steering the process were used in many instances to handle the complexities inherent in the project objectives. In the conclusion of the report, contributions are discussed, followed by an outline for future research avenues. Y1 - 2020 UR - https://tropico-project.eu/download/d6-4-research-report-on-collaborative-management-for-ict-enabled-public-sector-innovation/?wpdmdl=1571&refresh=60c51d2fad4cf1623530799 N1 - This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No.726840 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stockmann, Daniela T1 - China's cat-and mouse game blocking web content no model for EU JF - EUobserver Y1 - 2020 UR - https://euobserver.com/opinion/148415 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stockmann, Daniela A1 - Hartman, Keri A1 - Luo, Ting T1 - The political position generator - A new instrument for measuring political ties in China JF - Social Networks N2 - This paper proposes a novel instrument – the political position generator - for measuring individuals’ political ties, or personal, affective connections to state officials and other political actors. It adopts and adapts the more general position generator framework in social capital research to capture three key dimensions of political ties – upper reachability, network diversity, and tie strength. The measure is validated with data from a representative survey of the Chinese population and three scales representing the three political ties dimensions are created. In correlational and multivariate regression analyses, we find initial evidence of the instrument’s criterion-related (discriminant and concurrent) validity. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2020.05.004 SN - 0378-8733 VL - 63 SP - 70 EP - 79 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cingolani, Luciana T1 - Infrastructural state capacity in the digital age: What drives the performance of COVID-19 tracing apps? JF - Governance N2 - In a context where states increasingly complement their physical presence with digital means, the classic idea of infrastructural state power needs reconsideration. The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unparalleled opportunity to that end, given the uniformity of one type of digital infrastructural intervention - the offer of contact tracing apps - and its highly varying performance across geographies. Against this backdrop, the article seeks to expand traditional discussions on state infrastructural power by testing a series of propositions on the explanatory factors behind tracing apps' emergence and adoption rates. The findings stemming from a pool of 150 countries show no straightforward connection between traditional and digital forms of infrastructural power. They also point at the primacy of governmental trust over financial, institutional, and technological factors - including privacy standards - when explaining high adoption, suggesting that the relational aspect of infrastructural power acquires a proportionally greater weight in the digital era. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12666 SP - 1 EP - 23 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Cingolani, Luciana A1 - McBride, Keegan A1 - Hammerschmid, Gerhard T1 - Human Centric Smart Cities. Redefining the smart city. N2 - Smart cities have traditionally been studied from a technocentric perspective. However,such technological conceptualizations of smart cities are no longer adequate in today’s society. This policy brief discusses another alternative, human centric smart cities. Human centric smart cities are cities that practice smart governance, are collaborative, focused on user needs, supportive of innovation, and are ultimately oriented towards the development of wellbeing and the creation of public valuefor its citizens. In human centric smart cities, the use, implementation, and development of technology is guided by these foundations. The policy brief draws on insightgenerated from an international symposium organized for the City of Berlin on the future of smart cities. The brief itself is structured around four core aspects: human centricity, inter-sectoral collaboration, data governance, and administrative capacity. The brief ends by providing initial recommendations on how to start thinking about and implementing new human centric smart city strategies. Key Points: • In human centric smart cities, adopting a public valueor happiness orientedapproach to development will be critical. • The notion of innovation and service development inside human centric smartcities is changing, driven primarily by a shift in the structure of smart city ecosystems. • New human centric smart city data governance strategies must be in line withthe creation of public value, data sovereignty, and the maintenance offundamental rights and freedoms such as those related to privacy andfreedom of expression. • The change towards more collaborative, open, and human centric smart citieswill require new governance strategies and new administrative capacities. Y1 - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-44106 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bryson, Joanna T1 - Europe Is in Danger of Using the Wrong Definition of AI JF - Wired N2 - Some intelligent systems are at risk of being excluded from oversight in the EU's proposed legislation. This is bad for both businesses and citizens. Y1 - 2022 UR - https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-regulation-european-union/ ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Dempsey, Mark A1 - McBride, Keegan A1 - Haataja, Meeri A1 - Bryson, Joanna T1 - Transnational Digital Governance and Its Impact on Artificial Intelligence T2 - The Oxford Handbook of AI Governance N2 - The rapid pace of technological advancement and innovation has put existing governance and regulatory mechanisms to the test. There is a clear need for new and innovative regulatory mechanisms that enable governments to successfully manage the integration of digital technologies into our societies, and to ensure that such integration occurs in a sustainable, beneficial, and just manner. Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands out as one of the most debated of such innovations. What exactly is it, how should it be built and deployed, how can it be used, and how should it be regulated? Yet across the period of this debate, AI is becoming widely used and addressed within existing, evolving, and bespoke regulatory contexts. The present chapter explores the extant governance of AI and, in particular, what is arguably the most successful AI regulatory approach to date, that of the European Union. The chapter explores core definitional concepts, shared understandings, values, and approaches currently in play. It argues that not only are the Union’s regulations locally effective, but, due to the so-called “Brussels effect,” regulatory initiatives within the European Union also have a much broader global impact. As such, they warrant close consideration. Y1 - 2022 SN - 9780197579329 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197579329.013.16 N1 - A pre-print version is available at: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/xu3jr PB - Oxford University Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stockmann, Daniela T1 - Tech companies and the public interest: the role of the state in governing social media platforms JF - Information, Communication & Society N2 - In the early days of the internet, it was hoped that digital technology would bring about democracy and positive outcomes for society. Recently, the debate has shifted towards tech lash with many critics pointing towards technology companies undermining democracy, stability, and sustainability. As a result, a new consensus seems to be emerging among policymakers, companies, and civil societal actors that self-regulation has to move towards co-regulation. This Special Issue of Information, Communication and Society draws together cutting-edge contributions on three core themes in scholarly and policy discourse on platform regulation: First, the papers in this special issue enhance empirical understandings of the role of the state in governing social media platforms developing in the United States, Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, they provide a holistic framework to understand policy problems that need to be addressed, which helps to develop and evaluate new policy initiatives. Finally, papers point towards three approaches in governing social media platforms and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of content moderation, process-based co-regulation, as well as competition regulation and alternative business models. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2032796 VL - 26 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 15 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bryson, Joanna T1 - Robot, all too human JF - XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students N2 - Advanced robotics and artificial intelligence systems present a new challenge to human identity. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3313131 VL - 25 IS - 3 SP - 56 EP - 59 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stockmann, Daniela A1 - Garten, Felix A1 - Luo, Ting T1 - Who is a PRC user? Comparing Chinese social media user agreements JF - First Monday N2 - Social media companies rely on user agreements as one means to manage content produced by users. While much has been written on user agreements and community standards of U.S.-based social media, surprisingly little is known about Chinese user agreements and their implications. We compare terms of services as well as privacy policies of WeChat and Weibo between 2014 and 2019 using their U.S. counterparts WhatsApp and Twitter as a benchmark. We find that Chinese user agreements reveal a territorial-based understanding of content management differentiating between PRC and non-PRC users based on language, IP address and country of citizenship. Second, Chinese social media companies are surprisingly transparent about what content can be published, which has implications for self-censorship among users. Third, changes in PRC user agreements reflect Xi Jinping’s tightening control of the Internet. Finally, U.S.-based platforms have moved towards content management that differs by region, thus becoming more similar to the Chinese approach over time. KW - social media KW - content management KW - censorship KW - user agreements KW - China Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v25i8.10319 SN - 1396-0466 VL - 25 IS - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stephany, Fabian A1 - Neuhäuser, Leonie A1 - Stoehr, Niklas A1 - Darius, Philipp A1 - Teutloff, Ole A1 - Braesemann, Fabian T1 - The CoRisk-Index: A Data-Mining Approach to Identify Industry-Specific Risk Perceptions Related to Covid-19 JF - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications N2 - The global spread of Covid-19 has caused major economic disruptions. Governments around the world provide considerable financial support to mitigate the economic downturn. However, effective policy responses require reliable data on the economic consequences of the corona pandemic. We propose the CoRisk-Index: a real-time economic indicator of corporate risk perceptions related to Covid-19. Using data mining, we analyse all reports from US companies filed since January 2020, representing more than a third of the US workforce. We construct two measures—the number of ‘corona’ words in each report and the average text negativity of the sentences mentioning corona in each industry—that are aggregated in the CoRisk-Index. The index correlates with U.S. unemployment rates across industries and with an established market volatility measure, and it preempts stock market losses of February 2020. Moreover, thanks to topic modelling and natural language processing techniques, the CoRisk data provides highly granular data on different dimensions of the crisis and the concerns of individual industries. The index presented here helps researchers and decision makers to measure risk perceptions of industries with regard to Covid-19, bridging the quantification gap between highly volatile stock market dynamics and long-term macroeconomic figures. For immediate access to the data, we provide all findings and raw data on an interactive online dashboard. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01039-1 VL - 9 IS - 1 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kupi, Maximilian A1 - McBride, Keegan ED - Edelmann, ‪Noella T1 - Agile Development for Digital Government Services: Challenges and Success Factors T2 - Electronic Participation ePart 2021, Lecture Notes in Computer Science N2 - Many governments have problems with developing digital government services in an effective and efficient manner. One proposed solution to improve governmental digital service development is for governments to utilize agile development methods. However, there is currently a lack of understanding on two important and related topics. First, whether or not agile development might help to overcome common failure reasons of digital government projects. Second, what the challenges and success factors of agile digital government service development are. This paper addresses both of these gaps. By gathering insights from six cases where agile methods were used in the development of new digital services, it identifies five core categories of challenges and success factors encountered when utilizing agile development methods for governmental digital service development: organizational, methodological, end-user-related, technological, and regulatory. Furthermore, based on these findings, it makes initial recommendations on when and how to best use agile methods for digital government service development. KW - Agile development KW - Digital government KW - Public administration KW - e-government KW - Public services Y1 - 2021 UR - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-82824-0_11#Abs1 VL - 12849 SP - 139 EP - 150 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Bryson, Joanna A1 - Bogani, Ronny ED - Campbell, Aifric T1 - Robot Nannies Will Not Love T2 - The Love Makers N2 - How artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming the future of love and desire: a philosophical thriller and essays.A chance encounter between two women and a road trip into the future: It's Christmas Eve, and Scarlett, banker-turned-technologist, is leaving a secret underground lab to catch the last flight that will get her home in time to open presents with her three-year-old son. She offers a lift to a young woman in distress, who shares her intimate life story as they drive to the airport. These revelations will have devastating consequences for both of them. The Love Makers is a philosophical thriller about female friendship, class, motherhood, women, and work--and how artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming the future of love and desire. Aifric Campbell combines her novel with essays from leading scientists and commentators who examine what's at stake in our human-machine relationships. What is our future as friends, parents, lovers? Will advances in intelligent machines reverse decades of progress for women? From robot nannies to generative art and our ancient dreams of intelligent machines, The Love Makers blends storytelling with science communication to investigate the challenges and opportunities of emergent technologies and how we want to live. ContributorsRonny Bogani, Joanna J. Bryson, Julie Carpenter, Stephen Cave, Anita Chandran, Peter R. N. Childs, Kate Devlin, Kanta Dihal, Mary Flanagan, Margaret Rhee, Amanda Sharkey, Roberto Trotta, E. R. Truitt, and Richard Watson Y1 - 2021 UR - https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press/publications/the-love-makers/ SN - 97819126858442 SP - 249 EP - 258 PB - Goldsmiths Press CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nikiforova, Anastasija A1 - McBride, Keegan T1 - Open government data portal usability: A user-centred usability analysis of 41 open government data portals JF - Telematics and Informatics N2 - Open government data, as a phenomena, may be considered an important and influential innovation that has the potential to drive the creation of public value via enabling the prevention of corruption, increase in accountability and transparency, and driving the co-creation of new and innovative services. However, in order for open government data to be fully taken advantage of, it must be found, understood, and used. Though many countries maintain open government data portals, the usability of said portals can vary greatly; this is important to understand as the usability of a portal likely impacts the eventual reuse of the data made available there. Acknowledging the importance of portal usability to the data reuse process, this paper helps to elucidate some initial insights by asking two questions: “How can the usability of open government data portals be evaluated and compared across contexts?” and “What are the most commonly missing usability aspects from open government data portals?”. In order to answer these research questions, a subset of 41 national open government data portals were selected for an in-depth usability analysis drawing on the feedback from 40 individual users. As a result of this analysis, the paper is able to make three primary contributions: (1) the validation of a framework for open government data portal usability analysis, (2) develops an initial comparative international ranking of open government data portal usability, and (3) identifies commonly occurring portal usability strengths and weaknesses across contexts. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2020.101539 VL - 58 IS - May 2021, 101539 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - McBride, Keegan A1 - van Noordt, Colin A1 - Misuraca, Gianluca A1 - Hammerschmid, Gerhard T1 - Towards a Systematic Understanding on the Challenges of Procuring Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector T2 - SocArXiv Papers N2 - There is an increased interest amongst governments and public sector organisations about how to best integrate artificial intelligence into their day-to-day business processes. Yet, a large majority of technical know how is concentrated within the private sector, requiring most public sector organisations to rely on public procurement for AI systems. While many governments may have experience with traditional forms of public technological procurement, this paper argues that the public procurement of AI is different and new insight is needed to understand this differentiation and procure AI better. This paper offers an initial contribution to the public administration and management literature by describing this difference, and identifying the challenges associated with the public procurement of AI. In order to achieve this contribution, the research studied guidelines in four European countries (Estonia, Netherlands, Serbia, and the United Kingdom) to generate insight into the challenges faced, and potential solutions to these challenges, during the public procurement of AI process. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/un649/ U6 - https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/un649 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Darius, Philipp T1 - Who polarizes Twitter? Ideological polarization, partisan groups and strategic networked campaigning on Twitter during the 2017 and 2021 German Federal elections 'Bundestagswahlen' JF - Social Network Analysis and Mining N2 - Political campaign activities are increasingly digital. A crucial part of digital campaigning is communication efforts on social media platforms. As a forum for political discourse and political communication, parties and candidates on Twitter share public messages and aim to attract media attention and persuade voters. Party or prominent candidate hashtags are a central element of the campaign communication strategy since journalists and citizens search for these hashtags to follow the current debate concerning the hashed party or political candidate. Political elites and partisans use social media strategically, e.g., to link their messages to a broader debate, increase the visibility of messages, criticize other parties, or take over their hashtags (hashjacking). This study investigates the cases of the most recent 2017 and 2021 German federal elections called 'Bundestagswahlen'. The investigation (1) identifies communities of partisans in retweet networks in order to analyze the polarization of the most prominent hashtags of parties, 2) assesses the political behavior by partisan groups that amplify messages by political elites in these party networks, and 3) examines the polarization and strategic behavior of the identified partisan groups in the broader election hashtag debates using #BTW17 and #BTW21 as the prominent hashtags of the 2017 and 2021 elections. While in 2017, the far-right party 'Alternative für Deutschland' (AfD) and its partisans are in an isolated community, in 2021, they are part of the same community as the official party accounts of established conservative and liberal parties. This broader polarization may indicate changes in the political ideology of these actors. While the overall activity of political elites and partisans increased between 2017 and 2021, AfD politicians and partisans are more likely to use other party hashtags, which resulted in the polarization of the observed parts of the German political twitter sphere. While in 2017, the AfD polarized German Twitter, 2021 shows a broader division along the classical left–right divide. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-022-00958-w VL - 12 ER - TY - THES A1 - Kleinaltenkamp, Moritz J. T1 - The Future Is Now: Non-Linear Temporality in Blockchain Organizing N2 - This cumulative dissertation advances management scholarship by studying the novel phenomenon of Blockchain organizing. Blockchain is an emerging technology that facilitates the maintenance of data across networks of computers, as opposed to more traditional central servers. These distributed data maintenance capabilities may have wide-ranging consequences. Ever since Blockchain’s inception in 2008, a discourse identifying this technology as an enabler of radically new and decentralized modes of collective and societal coordination has gained traction. “Blockchain organizing” refers to practices in which such Blockchain technology artefacts are being developed, implemented, and/or utilized by organizations. Studying these practices presents a unique opportunity to further management scholarship; particularly subjective time research following the neo-institutional tradition. Blockchain is not only an emerging technology associated with significant future expectations, but further a meta-organizational technology whose very raison d'être is the transformation of entrenched organizational structures. When organizational actors develop, implement, and/or utilize Blockchain technology, bureaucratic ways of organizing that have been established in the past and continue to be legitimized in the present may become reevaluated in light of bold visions for an organizational and societal future that looks radically different. The dissertation at hand utilizes this Blockchain context as an exemplary case to develop theory on how transformative future visions and expectations associated with emerging technologies may become instantiated within the present, and conceptualizes this phenomenon as “present-future convergence”. Developed based on a field-level pilot study that led to an 18-month ethnographic engagement with one Blockchain start-up, the three papers gathered in the dissertation utilize an interpretivist approach to explain how present-future convergence is rooted in conjoined processes of intra- and inter-subjective temporal experience. Furthermore, the papers highlight the counterintuitive consequences that present-future convergence may have for processes of technological, organizational, and societal change. In doing so, the dissertation opens promising research avenues at the intersection of temporality, performativity, and sociomateriality, and contributes to scholarly understanding of Blockchain organizing. Practically speaking, the dissertation helps answer the question of how actors may “pull” the future into the present to realize transformative future visions like those associated with emerging technologies. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 10/2022 Y1 - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-44986 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4498 N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D010 + 2022D010+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Kleinaltenkamp, Moritz J. T1 - The Future Is Now: Non-Linear Temporality in Blockchain Organizing N2 - This cumulative dissertation advances management scholarship by studying the novel phenomenon of Blockchain organizing. Blockchain is an emerging technology that facilitates the maintenance of data across networks of computers, as opposed to more traditional central servers. These distributed data maintenance capabilities may have wide-ranging consequences. Ever since Blockchain’s inception in 2008, a discourse identifying this technology as an enabler of radically new and decentralized modes of collective and societal coordination has gained traction. “Blockchain organizing” refers to practices in which such Blockchain technology artefacts are being developed, implemented, and/or utilized by organizations. Studying these practices presents a unique opportunity to further management scholarship; particularly subjective time research following the neo-institutional tradition. Blockchain is not only an emerging technology associated with significant future expectations, but further a meta-organizational technology whose very raison d'être is the transformation of entrenched organizational structures. When organizational actors develop, implement, and/or utilize Blockchain technology, bureaucratic ways of organizing that have been established in the past and continue to be legitimized in the present may become reevaluated in light of bold visions for an organizational and societal future that looks radically different. The dissertation at hand utilizes this Blockchain context as an exemplary case to develop theory on how transformative future visions and expectations associated with emerging technologies may become instantiated within the present, and conceptualizes this phenomenon as “present-future convergence”. Developed based on a field-level pilot study that led to an 18-month ethnographic engagement with one Blockchain start-up, the three papers gathered in the dissertation utilize an interpretivist approach to explain how present-future convergence is rooted in conjoined processes of intra- and inter-subjective temporal experience. Furthermore, the papers highlight the counterintuitive consequences that present-future convergence may have for processes of technological, organizational, and societal change. In doing so, the dissertation opens promising research avenues at the intersection of temporality, performativity, and sociomateriality, and contributes to scholarly understanding of Blockchain organizing. Practically speaking, the dissertation helps answer the question of how actors may “pull” the future into the present to realize transformative future visions like those associated with emerging technologies. Y1 - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-54871 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5487 N1 - This document temporarily replaced the original while the second paper of the dissertation was under review at a journal. The full dissertation (Serial No. 10/2022) is available at: https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4498 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stockmann, Daniela A1 - Luo, Ting T1 - Surveying Internet Users in China: Comparing Representative Survey Data with Official Statistics JF - The China Quarterly N2 - China is well known for providing official data, but how to treat these data is a longstanding debate among China scholars. This paper advances understandings of how to interpret Chinese official statistics about the internet. Using standards for evaluating surveys in the social sciences, we systematically compare official data from the China Network Information Center (CNNIC), which is under the supervision of China’s main regulator of internet policy, with the China Internet Survey 2018 (CIS), which is, to our knowledge, the first nationally representative survey on internet use in China. Using three examples, we illustrate how methodological differences in sampling design and measurement can lead to vastly different conclusions about key indicators of internet use in mainland China, including the percentage of internet users, their regional and urban–rural digital divide, and the percentage of specific social media platforms. We discuss the challenges of survey work on internet use in China and offer recommendations on how to interpret official statistics, especially in light of the limitations researchers face when conducting face-to-face surveys in China. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741025000177 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library SP - 1 EP - 17 PB - Cambridge University Press (CUP) ER - TY - GEN A1 - Uçarer, İlke Zeynep A1 - Reddy, Kartikeya A1 - Pollex, Oliver A1 - Ianina, Polina T1 - Micro-Targeting Without Consent: How Party Apps Influence Electoral Campaigns in India. Towards Accountable Use of Voter Data in Political Campaigning N2 - Political party apps in India increasingly harvest sensitive voter data without explicit consent, enabling highly personalized micro-targeting that undermines voter autonomy, privacy, and democratic fairness. These practices amplify societal polarisation and facilitate disinformation, particularly harming minority communities and trust in the electoral process. Existing regulations, such as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA) and the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), fall short of ensuring transparency and accountability. Drawing on international best practices, this paper recommends (1) legally mandated, informed consent for voter data collection, (2) independent, annual data audits of political parties, and (3) public awareness campaigns on digital political advertising. Additional measures include real-time ad transparency dashboards and stricter oversight of digital campaign expenditures. Implementing these reforms will safeguard voter privacy, enhance trust in elections, and strengthen India’s democracy. Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-58436 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5843 PB - Hertie School ER -