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The demand for digital technologies has been growing due to a shift in the technological and economic paradigm. The need for online services has increased since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. There are significant disparities between Russian regions in the digital technology accessibility and the development of computer skills. In 2020, the Internet diffused rapidly in most regions, although previously, there had been a slowdown. As markets got saturated with digital services, the digital divide between Russian regions narrowed. Overall, the Internet use patterns are consistent with those of the spatial diffusion of innovations. Amongst the leaders, there are regions home to the largest agglomerations and northern territories of Russia, whereas those having a high proportion of rural population lag behind. Coastal and border regions (St. Petersburg, the Kaliningrad region, Karelia, Primorsky Krai, etc.) have better access to the Internet due to their proximity to the centres of technological innovations as well as the high intensity of external relations. Leading regions have an impact on their neighbours through spatial diffusion. Econometrically, access to the Internet depends on income, the average age and level of education, and its use depends on the business climate and Internet accessibility factors. Regional markets are gradually getting more saturated with digital services and technologies. The difference between regions in terms of access to the Internet is twofold, whereas, in terms of digital technology use, the gap is manifold. In many regions, the share of online commerce, which became the driver of economic development during the lockdown, is minimal. Based on the results of the study, several recommendations have been formulated.

Research in machine learning and applied statistics has led to the development of a plethora of different types of models. Lumen aims to make a particular yet broad class of models, namely, probabilistic models, more easily accessible to humans. Lumen does so by providing an interactive web application for the visual exploration, comparison, and validation of probabilistic models together with underlying data. As the main feature of Lumen a user can rapidly and incrementally build flexible and potentially complex interactive visualizations of both the probabilistic model and the data that the model was trained on. Many classic machine learning methods learn models that predict the value of some target variable(s) given the value of some input variable(s). Probabilistic models go beyond this point estimation by predicting instead of a particular value a probability distribution over the target variable(s). This allows, for instance, to estimate the prediction’s uncertainty, a highly relevant quantity. For a demonstrative example consider a model predicts that an image of a suspicious skin area does not show a malignant tumor. Here it would be extremely valuable to additionally know whether the model is sure to 99.99% or just 51%, that is, to know the uncertainty in the model’s prediction. Lumen is build on top of the modelbase back-end, which provides a SQL-like interface for querying models and its data (Lucas, 2020).

Search engines serve as information gatekeepers on a multitude of topics that are prone to gender, ethnicity, and race misrepresentations. In this paper, we specifically look at the image search representation of migrant population groups that are often subjected to discrimination and biased representation in mainstream media, increasingly so with the rise of right-wing populist actors in the Western countries. Using multiple (n = 200) virtual agents to simulate human browsing behavior in a controlled environment, we collect image search results related to various terms referring to migrants (e.g., expats, immigrants, and refugees, seven queries in English and German used in total) from the six most popular search engines. Then, with the aid of manual coding, we investigate which features are used to represent these groups and whether the representations are subjected to bias. Our findings indicate that search engines reproduce ethnic and gender biases common for mainstream media representations of different subgroups of migrant population. For instance, migrant representations tend to be highly racialized, and female migrants as well as migrants at work tend to be underrepresented in the results. Our findings highlight the need for further algorithmic impact auditing studies in the context of representation of potentially vulnerable groups in web search results.

Implicit and explicit gender biases in media representations of individuals have long existed. Women are less likely to be represented in gender-neutral media content (representation bias), and their face-to-body ratio in images is often lower (face-ism bias). In this article, we look at representativeness and face-ism in search engine image results. We systematically queried four search engines (Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex) from three locations, using two browsers and in two waves, with gender-neutral (person, intelligent person) and gendered (woman, intelligent woman, man, intelligent man) terminology, accessing the top 100 image results. We employed automatic identification for the individual’s gender expression (female/male) and the calculation of the face-to-body ratio of individuals depicted. We find that, as in other forms of media, search engine images perpetuate biases to the detriment of women, confirming the existence of the representation and face-ism biases. In-depth algorithmic debiasing with a specific focus on gender bias is overdue.

Algorithm audits have increased in recent years due to a growing need to independently assess the performance of automatically curated services that process, filter and rank the large and dynamic amount of information available on the Internet. Among several methodologies to perform such audits, virtual agents stand out because they offer the ability to perform systematic experiments, simulating human behaviour without the associated costs of recruiting participants. Motivated by the importance of research transparency and replicability of results, this article focuses on the challenges of such an approach. It provides methodological details, recommendations, lessons learned and limitations based on our experience of setting up experiments for eight search engines (including main, news, image and video sections) with hundreds of virtual agents placed in different regions. We demonstrate the successful performance of our research infrastructure across multiple data collections, with diverse experimental designs, and point to different changes and strategies that improve the quality of the method. We conclude that virtual agents are a promising venue for monitoring the performance of algorithms across long periods of time, and we hope that this article can serve as a basis for further research in this area.

Web search engines are important online information intermediaries that are frequently used and highly trusted by the public despite multiple evidence of their outputs being subjected to inaccuracies and biases. One form of such inaccuracy, which so far received little scholarly attention, is the presence of conspiratorial information, namely pages promoting conspiracy theories. We address this gap by conducting a comparative algorithm audit to examine the distribution of conspiratorial information in search results across five search engines: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Yandex. Using a virtual agent-based infrastructure, we systematically collect search outputs for six conspiracy theory-related queries (“flat earth”, “new world order”, “qanon”, “9/11”, “illuminati”, “george soros”) across three locations (two in the US and one in the UK) and two waves (March and May 2021). We find that all search engines except Google consistently displayed conspiracy-promoting results and returned links to conspiracy-dedicated websites, with variations across queries. Most conspiracy-promoting results came from social media and conspiracy-dedicated websites while conspiracy-debunking information was shared by scientific websites and legacy media. These observations are consistent across different locations and time periods highlighting the possibility that some engines systematically prioritize conspiracy-promoting content.

Algorithmenbasierte Empfehlungsdienste stellen Zuschauer*innen im nichtlinearen Streaming individuell audiovisuelle Inhalte in einer Vorauswahl zusammen, die potenziell ihren Präferenzen entsprechen. Um die Präferenzen der Zuschauer*innen zu ermitteln, müssen die Anbieter solcher Dienste personenbezogene Daten wie z. B. das Sehverhalten erheben und auswerten. Zuschauer*innen müssen bei der Wahl eines personalisierten Angebots daher den Nutzen der Personalisierung gegen die Bedrohung ihrer Privatsphäre abwägen. In diesem Beitrag wird dieses "Privatheitskalkül" von Zuschauer*innen aus einer medienökonomischen Perspektive untersucht. Im Fokus steht die Fragestellung, wie viel Personalisierung aus Sicht der Zuschauer*innen optimal ist und welche Auswirkungen heterogene Sensibilitäten der Datenpreisgabe, die Systemeffizienz sowie Reputation der Anbieter im vertrauensvollen Umgang mit personenbezogenen Daten auf das Kalkül der Zuschauer*innen haben. Aus den Ergebnissen werden zudem Implikationen für Geschäftsmodelle abgeleitet., In non-linear streaming, algorithm-based recommendation services automatically highlight a preselection of audiovisual content options based on viewers' individual preferences. In order to determine these preferences, the providers of such services must collect and evaluate personal data, such as viewing behavior. Viewers must therefore weigh the benefit of personalization against the loss of privacy when using these services. This article examines this "privacy calculus" by viewers, as well as the associated business model implications for streaming services from a media-economic perspective. In particular, it analyzes how much personalization is optimal from the viewer's perspective and how heterogeneous sensitivities of data disclosure, system efficiency and the reputation of providers in a trustworthy handling of personal data effect the viewer’s calculation.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have scarcely been considered in studies on green consumption. Likewise, little attention has been paid to the effects of informational feedback on household energy ICT-related consumption. This paper aims to fill these gaps in the literature. Using microdata from a representative sample of the European Union population, this paper analyzes, in a novel way, whether the provision of information about the energy consumed by online services would make internet users change to a greener ICT consumption behavior. To assess this issue, Heckman type selection models are estimated. The results show that people’s concerns about environmental problems, their environmental activism and self-perceived efficacy as consumers are directly related to the influence that information provision exerts. We also find that frequent internet users and those with better digital skills are more willing to change their online behavior if given information on energy consumption.

This paper seeks to investigate the digital transition from queer, physical spaces to queer, virtual spaces and its subcultural importance within the queer community. A trialectic spatiality approach (Lefebvre 1991; Soja 1996) will be applied to the cyberspace of Twitter in order to explore a particular subversion of a social media platform into a queer cyberspace through a user-established, unique, subcultural sign and code system. By researching the particular experiences of virtual, queer identities on Twitter, the social media platform is characterized as a thirdspace, using the example of 'Gay Twitter', conceived as a spatial phenomenon. The essay examines cultural semiotics and the ‘invisible,’ virtual confines of a queered Twitter realm by showcasing the linguistic, contextual and visual markers which create such an 'imagined,' exclusive, virtual Twitter community. Subsequently, the cyber-community creation and the establishment of norms and discourses reveal beneficial traits associated with a transition from physical to virtual spaces, but also negative aspects such as virtual gate-keeping, dominant gender and sexuality norms, internal discrimination and underrepresented groups and identities in a queer cyberspace., Diese wissenschaftliche Ausarbeitung befasst sich damit, welche subkulturelle Bedeutung der gesellschaftliche Übergang queer-physischer zu queer-virtueller Räumlichkeiten auf die Queer Community hat. Um dies zu untersuchen wird vorerst ein Denkansatz der trialektischen Räumlichkeit vorausgesetzt, welcher auf den Cyberspace Twitter angewandt wird und somit den Wandel dieser Social Media Plattform, welche durch die user-etablierten, einzigartigen, subkulturellen Zeichen- und Codesysteme in einen bestimmten queeren Cyberspace transformiert wird, darstellen soll. Durch die Erforschung spezifischer Erfahrungen virtueller queerer Cyberidentitäten anhand des Gegenstandes des räumlichen 'Gay Twitter'-Phänomens wird dementsprechend jene Twitterräumlichkeit als Thirdspace charakterisiert. In diesem Sinne möchte diese Ausarbeitung durch die Darstellung linguistischer, kontextueller und visueller Kennzeichen die kulturelle Semiotik und den 'unsichtbaren', virtuell-begrenzten und vorgestellten queeren Twitterbereich und dessen virtuelle Community skizzieren. Folglich werden durch die Produktion einer solchen Cybercommunity in dieser ausgewählten virtuellen Räumlichkeit sowohl die vorteilhaften Eigenschaften, die ein Übergang von physischer zu virtueller Räumlichkeit mit sich bringen, als auch, durch die Etablierung von bestimmten Normen und Diskursen, Aspekte virtueller Gatekeeping-Mechanismen, dominierend-idealistischer Geschlechter- und Sexualitätsnormen, interner Diskriminierungsprozesse und das Ignorieren ausgewählter Personengruppen und Identitäten in solch einer queeren Cyberspace erläutern.

We explore the impact of automation and digitalization on labor in the US agrifood system during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study considers each of the primary nodes in the system stretching from consumer through grocery stores and restaurants to last-mile delivery, distribution, food processing, farming, and agri-inputs. Not only automation and digitalization, but also the role of platforms such as Amazon, and food delivery firms such as GrubHub, Instacart, and Uber Eats are discussed. For restaurants, we consider not only dine-in restaurants, but also “ghost kitchens”. Furthermore, the possibility that farmers or distributors could disintermediate other nodes and deal directly with consumers is discussed. We conclude that, as a generalization, the further upstream one goes from the consumer, the less immediate and disruptive automation is likely to be for labor. However, our overall conclusion is that, given the current trajectories, labor is becoming increasingly precarious. If the current labor shortages continue, then automation is likely to accelerate. Platformization, while rampant in the relationships with final consumers, is likely to be less rapidly adopted further upstream where relationships are B-to-B and thus composed of actors that are wary of sharing data.

With the popularity of online games, the overuse of these games has raised concerns. The literature has mainly conceptualized players' psychosocial characteristics as risk factors for game addiction. However, many studies have confirmed that game structural characteristics play a more important role in players' experience. Similarly, this research investigates how interactive affordances of World of Warcraft motivate players to play the game excessively. We have used two qualitative methods of Think-aloud protocol and in-depth interviews with World of Warcraft players. We recruited 35 World of Warcraft players from Singapore Nanyang Technological University in May 2021. Twenty of them participated in the in-depth interview and 15 of them participated in Think-aloud protocol sessions. We found that strong social ties in persistent groups encourage excessive gaming and causes sleep deficits, bad eating habit and ignoring real-life duties. Intra-group competition for outperformance encourages excessive gaming because players receive powerful items if they spend more time on gaming. Rewards and contingent tasks that are designed in games to encourage playing the game with time encourage players to play the game excessively. Finally, after explaining about gaps in knowledge, we discuss how our findings contribute to the literature. Implications for future research and insights to game addicts are provided.

Unprecedented growth in technology usage has led to the proliferation of e-commerce sites and their adoption globally. However, there are factors hindering the adoption and full exploitation of e-commerce sites in Nigeria. In view of this, this study examined users' perception of selected e-commerce sites in Nigeria, using students of the University of Ilorin as a case study. The population of the study comprised mainly of 5500 students from four faculties selected from the University of Ilorin using a simple random sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was used as the main instrument for data collection using descriptive statistics to analyze field data. A Purposive sampling technique was adopted in the selection of students for this study. The sample size comprised of 300 students selected purposively from the four Faculties. Findings revealed that the majority of users patronized e-commerce sites such as Jumia, Konga, OLX, and Jiji. However, users of e-commerce sites raised issues of privacy concerns, low-security awareness, and lack of user education. In conclusion, recommendations were made towards improving the adoption and use of e-commerce sites in Nigeria.

In Zeiten, in denen der Partnermarkt zunehmend unübersichtlich wird, verspricht Online-Dating eine Antwort - zumindest scheinbar. Doch lässt sich der Stress der Wahlfreiheit mit datenbasiertem Matching lindern? Der Soziologe Dr. Kai Dröge im Interview über die 'Liebe im Netz'.

Die Digitalisierung unserer Gesellschaft bedeutet für den Einzelhandel und unsere Städte einen tiefgreifenden Umbruch. Viele Menschen nutzen das Internet inzwischen regelmäßig für ihren Einkauf. Weiterhin hohe Wachstumsraten sprechen für eine anhaltende Dynamik bei der Verbreitung auch in Deutschland. Die veränderten Einkaufsgewohnheiten gehen mit einer Umsatzverlagerung vom stationären Handel in den Onlinehandel einher und verändern die Nutzungsstrukturen in den Stadtzentren. Dies wirft bezüglich der Raumentwicklung vielfältige Fragen auf. Die AG "Onlinehandel und Raumentwicklung" - ein ehrenamtlich arbeitendes, zeitlich befristetes, inter- und transdisziplinäres Gremium der Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft Nordrhein-Westfalen der Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft (ARL) - hat diese Fragen aufgegriffen und diskutiert., With the expansion of online trading, retail trade development has reached a new level in the process of ongoing structural change. Multi-channel concepts that combine offline and online retail are becoming increasingly important. In the course of digitalisation, "hybrid" types of enterprises that show significant differences from traditional retail stores are emerging. For providers unable to find answers to the challenges associated with this change, it will become more and more difficult to maintain their market position. The retail structures are changing - and that is changing our cities. In many town centres, the declining demand for retail space is already clearly visible today. The spatial effects depend on the specific situation at the respective location. The basic tendency is to expect a thinning out and polarisation of the urban centre systems: A few town centres with a special experiential character will assert themselves as retail locations and will be able to further distinguish themselves, in other locations the task of local supply will move into the focus in the future, and some town centres will lose their supply function. But even or especially in a digital world: Town centres are not a obsolescent model! On the contrary, the current developments can be the starting line for multifunctional locations to emerge that exude appeal for people and stay generally attractive. Fresh thinking and active engagement are needed to make this vision come true.

We audit the presence of domain-level source diversity bias in video search results. Using a virtual agent-based approach, we compare outputs of four Western and one non-Western search engines for English and Russian queries. Our findings highlight that source diversity varies substantially depending on the language with English queries returning more diverse outputs. We also find disproportionately high presence of a single platform, YouTube, in top search outputs for all Western search engines except Google. At the same time, we observe that Youtube’s major competitors such as Vimeo or Dailymotion do not appear in the sampled Google’s video search results. This finding suggests that Google might be downgrading the results from the main competitors of Google-owned Youtube and highlights the necessity for further studies focusing on the presence of own-content bias in Google’s search results.

Die zunehmende Verfügbarkeit von Daten und Algorithmen ermöglicht es Unternehmen, Preise und Produkte dynamisch über die Zeit oder zwischen einzelnen Verbraucherinnen und Verbrauchern stärker zu differenzieren. Solche Differenzierungen könnten sowohl positive als auch negative Wohlfahrts- und Verteilungseffekte auslösen. Diese Expertise fasst die Theorie daten- oder algorithmenbasierter Preis- und Produktdifferenzierungen sowie die vorhandene Evidenz zu deren Verbreitung und Effekten in den Bereichen Online-Plattformen, Kreditvergabe und Versicherungen zusammen. Sie zeigt sich daraus möglicherweise ergebende sozialpolitische Handlungsbedarfe auf. Jedoch bestehen noch erhebliche Erkenntnislücken, vor allem was die Betroffenheit und Folgen von individueller Preisdifferenzierung für die Verbraucherinnen und Verbraucher betrifft. Daher muss für eine zielführende Politikgestaltung die Forschung zu dieser Thematik weiter vorangetrieben werden., Increased availability of data and algorithms allows enterprises to differentiate their prices and products, dynamicially or between individual consumers, more precisely than in the past. This development may yield positive or negative results as regards social welfare and inequality. The study summarizes the theory of data- or algorithm-based price and product differentiation, and the current evidence concerning their use and impact in online platform, credit and insurance markets. It shows that concomitant social policy action might be nessary. However, in view of serious evidence gaps, in particular with respect to the incidence and the impact of individual price differentiation at the consumer level, developing efficient policy requires advancing research on the subject.

Web search engines influence perception of social reality by filtering and ranking information. However, their outputs are often subjected to bias that can lead to skewed representation of subjects such as professional occupations or gender. In our paper, we use a mixed-method approach to investigate presence of race and gender bias in representation of artificial intelligence (AI) in image search results coming from six different search engines. Our findings show that search engines prioritize anthropomorphic images of AI that portray it as white, whereas non-white images of AI are present only in non-Western search engines. By contrast, gender representation of AI is more diverse and less skewed towards a specific gender that can be attributed to higher awareness about gender bias in search outputs. Our observations indicate both the need and the possibility for addressing bias in representation of societally relevant subjects, such as technological innovation, and emphasize the importance of designing new approaches for detecting bias in information retrieval systems.

Access to accurate and up-to-date information is essential for individual and collective decision making, especially at times of emergency. On February 26, 2020, two weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the COVID-19’s emergency a “pandemic,” we systematically collected and analyzed search results for the term “coronavirus” in three languages from six search engines. We found that different search engines prioritize specific categories of information sources, such as government-related websites or alternative media. We also observed that source ranking within the same search engine is subjected to randomization, which can result in unequal access to information among users.

Der Tabakkonsum bleibt eine der verbreitetsten vermeidbaren Todesursachen weltweit und die Klärung der Hintergründe für den Einstieg unter Jugendlichen ist deshalb weiterhin von großem Interesse. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit kommt dabei der Rolle des sozialen und medialen Umfelds zu. Im Kontext neuer Interaktionsstrukturen auf sozialen Medien wird zunehmend die Notwendigkeit erkannt, auch komplexere Wirkungsmechanismen zu berücksichtigen. Diese Studie folgt diesem Ansatz und untersucht, wie Rezeption und Produktion tabakbezogener Inhalte auf sozialen Medien normative Vorstellungen und Konsumverhalten unter Jugendlichen beeinflussen. Dazu wurde eine zweiwellige Panelstudie (N = 893) an vier Schweizer Gymnasien durchgeführt. Einerseits zeigte sich, dass die wahrgenommene Prävalenz und Akzeptanz des Tabakkonsums positiv mit dem wahrgenommenen Konsum auf Instagram zusammenhängen. Andererseits ließ sich der Tabakkonsum selbst sowohl mit normativen Vorstellungen als auch mit der Produktion von entsprechenden Inhalten auf Snapchat erklären. Der Beitrag diskutiert die unterschiedliche Rolle der Plattformen bezüglich Rezeptions- und Produktionseffekten und die Relevanz von normativen Vorstellungen als Mediatoren im Medienwirkungsprozess., Tobacco consumption remains one of the most prevalent preventable causes of death worldwide, and the underlying processes of smoking onset among adolescents are therefore still of great interest. Recently, the role of the social context and related media environment has received increasing attention. Considering new interaction structures online, social media scholars indicated the necessity to consider more complex mechanisms. This study follows this call and investigates how reception and production of tobacco-related content on social media influence normative beliefs and tobacco consumption among adolescents. A two-wave panel study (N = 893) was conducted at four Swiss high schools. On the one hand, perceived prevalence and acceptance of tobacco use were found to be positively related to perceived substance use on Instagram. On the other hand, tobacco use itself could be explained by normative beliefs as well as by the production and sharing of related content on Snapchat. The article discusses the different roles of the platforms in terms of reception and production effects and the relevance of normative beliefs mediating media effects.

Der vorliegende Beitrag ist ein Forschungsbericht, der zusammen mit Studierenden im Wintersemester 2020/21 entstand: Das langzeitliche Homeoffice und die Zusammenarbeit mittels digital vermittelter Kommunikation stellt ein aktuelles Veränderungsthema für Organisationen und Menschen dar. Was bedeutet langzeitliches Homeoffice in Vergleich zum Arbeiten in der Betriebsstätte? Was lässt sich aus der realen Welt in den digitalen Kontext mitnehmen, was geht dabei verloren? Was verändert sich in den Organisationen, Interaktionen und Menschen durch das pandemiebedingt langzeitliche Homeoffice? Diese Fragen betreffen Studierende und Lehrende gleichermaßen, Früchte dieses geteilten Interesses finden sich in diesem Bericht.

This paper postulates that the effect of e-commerce on firm performance is not direct and needs to be examined using mediating factors. The Ordinary Least-Squares (OLS) model was employed with the data of the Flash Eurobarometer 439 Survey entitled The Use of Online Marketplaces and Search Engines by small and medium enterprises. The obtained findings provide support for the mediating hypothesis. To be more precise, while the relationship between e-commerce and firm performance is negative, it is positively mediated by certain types of internet sales channels. In particular, the benefits of e-commerce in terms of higher sales are more pronounced when firms use commercial websites and online marketplaces. On the other hand, the interaction between e-commerce and search engines has an insignificant effect on firm performance. This study advances research on e-commerce by emphasizing the importance of mediating effect.

Suchmaschinen, Netzwerk- und Multimediaplattformen sowie Instant-Messaging-Dienste sind wesentliche Elemente des Kommunikations- und Informationsverhaltens online. Sie fungieren als Intermediäre, weil sie ihren Nutzerinnen und Nutzern Inhalte aus zahlreichen unterschiedlichen Quellen erschließen, unter Zuhilfenahme von Algorithmen filtern und zu personalisierten Informationsangeboten bündeln. Aus Nutzersicht unterstützen sie neben dem Informationsmanagement im engeren Sinne auch weitergehende Praktiken des Identitäts- und Beziehungsmanagements. Online-Intermediäre tragen damit wesentlich zum gegenwärtig beobachtbaren Wandel von Öffentlichkeit bei, doch die resultierenden Folgen für die Meinungsbildung zu gesellschaftlich relevanten Themen sind bislang nicht hinreichend untersucht und verstanden. Im Auftrag der Medienanstalten wurde eine qualitative Studie durchgeführt, die die Relevanz von Intermediären sowie die mit ihnen verbundenen Praktiken der informationsorientierten Nutzung ermitteln sollte.

Onlinedating ist in den letzten Jahren zu einem Massenphänomen geworden und hat sowohl in der Wissenschaft als auch in der allgemeinen Öffentlichkeit eine breite Debatte ausgelöst. Interessanterweise werden dabei teils große Hoffnungen auf eine Aufweichung der gesellschaftlichen Geschlechterkonstruktionen und den Abbau von Ungleichheiten formuliert. Der Artikel zeigt auf der Basis eigener Forschungen, wie ambivalent sich diese Hoffnungen in der Praxis tatsächlich darstellen. Dahinter steht die These, dass sich im Phänomen Onlinedating zwei sehr ähnlich gelagerte kulturelle Befreiungsnarrative der modernen Gesellschaft kreuzen: einerseits das romantische Ideal mit seinem Versprechen auf eine freie und selbstbestimmte Liebe sowie andererseits der Diskurs um die Potenziale des Internets für soziale Umwälzungen und seine befreiende Wirkung auf die sozialen Geschlechterkategorien und -verhältnisse., Online dating has in recent years become a mass phenomenon, leading to an extensive debate in the scientific world as well as among the general public. Interestingly, this new form of dating has raised great expectations in regard to a blurring of classic gender identities and the abolition of inequalities. The article analyzes, on an empirical basis, how ambivalent these expectations are in practice. In doing so, I follow the general assumption that online dating is characterized by the intersection of two cultural 'liberation narratives' of modern society: the romantic ideal that promises free and autonomous love and the discourse about the internet and its potential to reshape society in general and gender categories in particular.

The "Uberisation" of work - the increasing use of digital platforms by self-employed service providers – is often seen as a pathway into precarious employment in rich countries. In Africa, quite the opposite may be true: the rise of digital platforms offers new opportunities for informal entrepreneurs to become more productive, and eventually formalise. Digitalisation in Africa is happening on a scale and at a pace that many would not have anticipated. Digital platforms - such as Uber, Airbnb, and local varieties - are spreading. At the same time, most African economies are characterised by the pervasive informality of firms and employment. Informality is high because formalisation does not pay for firms. Digitalisation is likely to affect both the costs and benefits of formalising. Digital platforms can increase firm and worker productivity, for example through better market access, and they also provide an entry point for formalising firms. The Uberisation - and formalisation - of employment could be beneficial to the many African self-employed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that self-employed drivers registered on a digital platform, for example, have higher earnings than "conventional" taxi ones. Customers can benefit from better services and lower prices, and governments can raise their capacity to generate tax revenue using information from online platforms and digital transactions. Overall, the positive effects of digital platforms seem to outweigh the negative ones. At the same time, adjustment costs - as evident in the protests by established taxi drivers witnessed in many countries - need to be addressed and mitigated. There is very limited empirical evidence on the effects of digitalisation in general, and of digital platforms in particular, in Africa. Such research is urgently needed to harness the potential of new technologies for inclusive economic development. Digital platforms can contribute to formalising economies and improving tax collection in Afri

A human subject laboratory experiment compares the real-time market performance of the two most popular auction formats for online ad space, Vickrey- Clarke-Groves (VCG) and Generalized Second Price (GSP). Theoretical predictions made in papers by Varian (2007) and Edelman et al. (2007) seem to organize the data well overall. Efficiency under VCG exceeds that under GSP in nearly all treatments. The difference is economically significant in the more competitive parameter configurations and is statistically significant in most treatments. Revenue capture tends to be similar across auction formats in most treatments.

A prime function of many major World Wide Web applications is Online Service Allocation (OSA), the function of matching individual consumers with particular services/goods (which may include loans or jobs as well as products) each with its own producer. In the applications of interest, consumers are free to choose, so OSA usually takes the form of personalized recommendation or search in practice. The performance metrics of recommender and search systems currently tend to focus on just one side of the match, in some cases the consumers (e.g. satisfaction) and in other cases the producers (e.g., profit). However, a sustainable OSA platform needs benefit both consumers and producers; otherwise the neglected party eventually may stop using it. In this paper, we show how to adapt economists' traditional idea of maximizing total surplus (the sum of consumer net benefit and producer profit) to the heterogeneous world of online service allocation, in an effort to promote the web intelligence for social good in online eco-systems. Modifications of traditional personalized recommendation algorithms enable us to apply Total Surplus Maximization (TSM) to three very different types of real-world tasks - e-commerce, P2P lending and freelancing. The results for all three tasks suggest that TSM compares very favorably to currently popular approaches, to the benefit of both producers and consumers.