Recent Publications

This list includes some of our most recent publications. More publications will be added to this list gradually.

Blockchain based Resource Governance for Decentralized Web Environments

Basile, D., Di Ciccio, C., Goretti, V., & Kirrane, S. (2023). Blockchain based Resource Governance for Decentralized Web Environments. arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.06919.

Abstract:

Although the development of centralized web-based platforms have brought about economic and societal benefits, such platforms have also resulted in the concentration of power in a small number of web stakeholders. Decentralization initiatives, such as Solid, Digi.me, and ActivityPub, aim to give data owners more control over their data and to level the playing field by enabling small companies and individuals to gain access to data thus stimulating innovation. However, these initiatives typically employ access control mechanisms that cannot verify compliance with usage conditions after access has been granted to others. Thus, in this paper, we extend the state of the art by proposing a resource governance conceptual framework, entitled ReGov, that facilitates usage control in decentralized web environments. We subsequently demonstrate how our framework can be instantiated by combining blockchain and trusted execution environments. Additionally, we evaluate its effectiveness through a detailed analysis of requirements derived from a data market motivating scenario, as well as an assessment of the security, privacy, and affordability aspects of our proposal.

A novel model usability evaluation framework (MUsE) for explainable artificial intelligence

Dieber, J., & Kirrane, S. (2022). A novel model usability evaluation framework (MUsE) for explainable artificial intelligence. Information Fusion, 81, 143-153.

Abstract:

Whenitcomestocomplexmachinelearning models, commonly referred to as black boxes, understanding the underlying decision making process is crucial for domains such as healthcare and financial services, as well as when they are used in connection with safety critical systems such as autonomous vehicles. As a result, interest in explainable artificial intelligence (xAI) tools and techniques has increased in recent years. However, the user experience (UX) effectiveness of existing xAI frameworks, especially concerning algorithms that work with data as opposed to images, is still an open research question. In order to address this gap, we examine the UX effectiveness of the Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME) xAI framework, one of the most popular model agnostic frameworks found in the literature, with a specific focus on its performance in terms of making tabular models more interpretable. In particular, we apply several state of the art machine learning algorithms on a tabular dataset, and demonstrate how LIME can be used to supplement conventional performance assessment methods. Based on this experience, we evaluate the understandability of the output produced by LIME both via a usability study, involving participants who are not familiar with LIME, and its overall usability via a custom made assessment framework, called Model Usability Evaluation (MUsE), which is derived from the International Organisation for Standardisation 9241-11:2018 standard.

Governance of Autonomous Agents on the Web: Challenges and Opportunities

Kampik, T., Mansour, A., Boissier, O., Kirrane, S., Padget, J., Payne, T. R., Singh, M. P., Tamma, V. & Zimmermann, A. (2022). Governance of Autonomous Agents on the Web: Challenges and Opportunities. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, 22(4), 1-31.

Abstract:

The study of autonomous agents has a long history in the Multiagent System and the Semantic Web communities, with applications ranging from automating business processes to personal assistants. More recently, the Web of Things (WoT), which is an extension of the Internet of Things (IoT) with metadata expressed in Web standards, and its community provide further motivation for pushing the autonomous agents research agenda forward. Although representing and reasoning about norms, policies, and preferences is crucial to ensuring that autonomous agents act in a manner that satisfies stakeholder requirements, normative concepts, policies, and preferences have yet to be considered as first-class abstractions in Web-based multiagent systems. Towards this end, this article motivates the need for alignment and joint research across the Multiagent Systems, Semantic Web, and WoT communities, introduces a conceptual framework for governance of autonomous agents on the Web, and identifies several research challenges and opportunities.

Your Consent Is Worth 75 Euros A Year — Measurement and Lawfulness of Cookie Paywalls

Morel, V., Santos, C., Lintao, Y., & Human, S. (2022, November). Your Consent Is Worth 75 Euros A Year-Measurement and Lawfulness of Cookie Paywalls. In Proceedings of the 21st Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (pp. 213-218).

Abstract:

Most websites offer their content for free, though this gratuity often comes with a counterpart: personal data is collected to finance these websites by resorting, mostly, to tracking and thus targeted advertising. Cookie walls and paywalls, used to retrieve consent, recently generated interest from EU DPAs and seemed to have grown in popularity. However, they have been overlooked by scholars. We present in this paper 1) the results of an exploratory study conducted on 2800 Central European websites to measure the presence and practices of cookie paywalls, and 2) a framing of their lawfulness amidst the variety of legal decisions and guidelines.

Human-centric Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems: Towards a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Alt, R., Habibnia, H., & Neumann, G. (2022). Human-centric Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems: Towards a Sustainable Digital Economy.

Abstract:

With the growing digital transformation, increasingly more personal data is produced, collected, shared, and used. Online privacy has become one of the most significant challenges for co-creating digital artefacts in a sustainable digital world. This paper presents the results of a representative study on online privacy conducted in Austria, which shows a growing need for personalized and human-centric sociotechnical solutions which empower humans to exercise their rights to online privacy, consenting and agency. We call such systems Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems (PDPCAS). Using a human-centric perspective on privacy and consenting, which is inspired by recent advancements in cognitive sciences and sociology of science and technology, as well as the results of our representative study, combined with the results of a set of interdisciplinary expert interviews, we provide a reflection on PDPCASs, which mainly includes the functional and non-functional requirements of such systems. Based on the results of our studies, we reflect on the main challenges for the development and adaptation of PDPCASs. We argue that besides the absence of supporting automation standards, the lack of enforceability, and the technical complexities of developing human-centric PDPCASs, the user-acceptance and user experience design pose significant challenges to realizing these systems in practice. Finally, the paper provides a short reflection on the importance of human-centric PDPCASs for the co-creation of a sustainable digital economy.

Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms: Current Open Proposals and Challenges

Human, S., Pandit, H. J., Morel, V., Santos, C., Degeling, M., Rossi, A., … & Kamara, I. (2022, June). Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms: Current Open Proposals and Challenges. In 2022 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW) (pp. 231-239). IEEE.

Abstract:

Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms (DPCCMs) enable users to express their privacy decisions and manage their online consent. Thus, they can become a crucial means of protecting individuals’ online privacy and agency, thereby replacing the current problematic practices such as “consent dialogues”. Based on an in-depth analysis of different DPCCMs, we propose an interdisciplinary set of factors that can be used for a comparison of such mechanisms. Moreover, we use the results from a qualitative expert study to identify some of the main multidisciplinary challenges that DPCCMs should address to become widely adopted data privacy mechanisms. We leverage both the factors and the challenges to compare two current open specifications, i.e. the Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC) and the Global Privacy Control (GPC), and discuss future work.

A Call for Interdisciplinary Research on Applied Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Neumann, G., & Alt, R. (2022). A call for interdisciplinary research on applied human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy. In Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 4695-4696).

Abstract:

Human-centricity is a fundamental aspect of a sustainable digital transformation. While the importance of human-centricity has been widely discussed, the field still lacks commonly accepted interdisciplinary definitions, concepts, evaluation methodologies, and realization approaches. We call for more interdisciplinary research and collaboration towards the co-creation of “applied human-centricity” in real-world sustainable digital environments.

Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC): An Interdisciplinary Overview

Human, S. (2022). Advanced data protection control (adpc): An interdisciplinary overview. arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.09724.

Abstract:

The Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC) is a technical specification – and a set of sociotechnical mechanisms surrounding it – that can change the current practice of Internet-based personal data protection and consenting by providing novel and standardized means for the communication of privacy and consenting data, meta-data, information, requests, preferences, and decisions. The ADPC supports humans in practicing their rights to privacy and agency by giving them more human-centric control over the processing of their personal data and consent. It helps the data controllers to improve their users’ experiences and provides them with easy-to-adopt means to comply with the relevant legal and ethical requirements and expectations.

Contextuality and Intersectionality of E-Consent: A Human-centric Reflection on Digital Consenting in the Emerging Genetic Data Markets

Human, S., & Kazzazi, M. (2021, September). Contextuality and intersectionality of e-consent: A human-centric reflection on digital consenting in the emerging genetic data markets. In 2021 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW) (pp. 307-311). IEEE.

Abstract:

Consent plays an essential role in different digital regulations, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As a result, obtaining consent from data subjects (e.g. end-users or end-customers) are widely practised by many data controllers (e.g. service providers, companies, or organisations). Considering the importance and the widespread practice of consent-obtaining in different domains, critical and interdisciplinary studies of the current consent-obtaining mechanisms are highly needed. In this paper, we first shortly discuss an interdisciplinary human-centric perspective to consenting and propose that, among others, the contextuality of consent, as well as the potential intersectionality of consent, should be carefully considered in the development of consent-obtaining mechanisms. Then we elaborate on the distinction between “consent to personal data processing for commercial purposes” and “consent to personal data donations intended for research” in the field of direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC-GT). We show that based on our human-centric perspective, the contextuality and intersectionality of consent are sometimes overlooked in the current DTC-GT services, which are of considerable significance in the emerging genetic data markets. We hope that this paper can contribute towards the development of human-centric, accountable, lawful, and ethical (HALE) sociotechnical information systems dealing with consent and privacy management as fundamental building blocks of a sustainable digital economy.

Bias in Geographic Information Systems: The Case of Google Maps

Wagner, B., Winkler, T., & Human, S. (2021). Bias in Geographic Information Systems: The Case of Google Maps.

Abstract:

Users’ perception of geographic space depends heavily on geographic information systems (GIS). GIS are the most common way for users to estimate travel time, provide routing information and recommend appropriate forms of transportation. This article analyses how predictions made by Google Maps, one of the most popular GIS, influence users’ perceptions and travel choices. To analyze this influence, a pre-study in a classroom setting (n=36) as well as an online survey (n=521) were conducted. We study users intuitive perception of travel time, before using the Google Maps Mobile App as a ’treatment’ to see how it influences their perceptions of travel time and choice of transportation type. We then contrast this original Google Maps treatment to a mock-up ’warning label version’ of Google which informs users about biases in Google Maps and an ’unbiased version’ of Google Maps based on ground truth data. Our analysis suggests that Google Maps systematically underestimates necessary car driving time, which has an impact on users’ choice of transportation.

Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Neumann, G., & Alt, R. (2021). Human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy.

Abstract:

Human-centricity is arguably one of the fundamental aspects of a sustainable digital economy. The goal of this minitrack is to advance the level of understanding of what human-centricity and sustainable digital economy are, to identify the main interdisciplinary challenges for the realization of human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy, and to provide the best-practice case studies on how human-centricity and sustainability may be achieved in specific domains.

Knowledge Graphs

Aidan Hogan, Eva Blomqvist, Michael Cochez, Claudia d’Amato, Gerard De Melo, Claudio Gutierrez, Sabrina Kirrane, José Emilio Labra Gayo, Roberto Navigli, Sebastian Neumaier, 2021. Knowledge graphs. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 54, 4 (2021), 1–37.

Abstract:

In this article, we provide a comprehensive introduction to knowledge graphs, which have recently garnered significant attention from both industry and academia in scenarios that require exploiting diverse, dynamic, large-scale collections of data. After some opening remarks, we motivate and contrast various graph-based data models, as well as languages used to query and validate knowledge graphs. We explain how knowledge can be represented and extracted using a combination of deductive and inductive techniques. We conclude with high-level future research directions for knowledge graphs.

The linked legal data landscape: linking legal data across different countries

Filtz, E., Kirrane, S., & Polleres, A. (2021). The linked legal data landscape: linking legal data across different countries. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 29(4), 485-539.

Abstract:

The European Union is working towards harmonizing legislation across Europe, in order to improve cross-border interchange of legal information. This goal is supported for instance via standards such as the European Law Identifier (ELI) and the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI), which provide technical specifications for Web identifiers and suggestions for vocabularies to be used to describe metadata pertaining to legal documents in a machine readable format. Notably, these ECLI and ELI metadata standards adhere to the RDF data format which forms the basis of Linked Data, and therefore have the potential to form a basis for a pan-European legal Knowledge Graph. Unfortunately, to date said specifications have only been partially adopted by EU member states. In this paper we describe a methodology to transform the existing legal information system used in Austria to such a legal knowledge graph covering different steps from modeling national specific aspects, to population, and finally the integration of legal data from other countries through linked data. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by exemplifying practical use cases from legal information search, which are not possible in an automated fashion so far.

A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM

Human, Soheil and Cech, Florian (2020) A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM. In: Human Centred Intelligent Systems 2020, Jun 17, 2020 – Jun 19, 2020.

Abstract:

According to different legal frameworks such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an end-user’s consent constitutes one of the well-known legal bases for personal data processing. However, research has indicated that the majority of end-users have difficulty in understanding what they are consenting to in the digital world. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that marginalized people are confronted with even more difficulties when dealing with their own digital privacy. In this research, we use an enactivist perspective from cognitive science to develop a basic human-centric framework for digital consenting. We argue that the action of consenting is a sociocognitive action and includes cognitive, collective, and contextual aspects. Based on the developed theoretical framework, we present our qualitative evaluation of the consent-obtaining mechanisms implemented and used by the five big tech companies, i.e. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM). The evaluation shows that these companies have failed in their efforts to empower end-users by considering the human-centric aspects of the action of consenting. We use this approach to argue that their consent-obtaining mechanisms violate principles of fairness, accountability and transparency. We then suggest that our approach may raise doubts about the lawfulness of the obtained consent—particularly considering the basic requirements of lawful consent within the legal framework of the GDPR.

Machine Understandable Policies and GDPR Compliance Checking

Internet Governance

Kettemann, Internet Governance, in Jahnel et al. (Hrsg.), Internetrecht, 4. Auflage (Wien: Springer, 2020), 47-73

The SPECIAL-K Personal Data Processing Transparency and Compliance Platform

Abstract:

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) brings new challenges for companies, who must provide transparency with respect to personal data processing and sharing within and between organisations. Additionally companies need to demonstrate that their systems and business processes comply with usage constraints specified by data subjects. This paper first presents the Linked Data ontologies and vocabularies developed within the SPECIAL EU H2020 project, which can be used to represent data usage policies and data processing and sharing events, including the consent provided by the data subject and subsequent changes to or revocation of said consent. Following on from this, we propose a concrete transparency and compliance architecture, referred to as SPECIAL-K, that can automatically verify that data processing and sharing complies with the relevant usage control policies. Our evaluation, based on a new transparency and compliance benchmark, shows the efficiency and scalability of the system with increasing number of events and users, covering a wide range of real-world streaming and batch processing scenarios.

Ein Menschenrechts-Update für das Internet

Kettemann, Ein Menschenrechts-Update für das Internet, Tagesspiegel Background Digitalisierung & KI, 17.6.2020, https://background.tagesspiegel.de/digitalisierung/ein-menschenrechts-update-fuer-das-internet.

Abstract:

Deutschland hat jetzt eine einzigartige Chance, global für eine menschenrechtsbasierte und entwicklungsorientierte Internetpolitik einzutreten. Gerade Corona hat gezeigt, wie wichtig digitale Rechte sind. Zeit für ein Update, schreibt Matthias Kettemann.

End-user Empowerment: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Gsenger, Rita, and Human, Soheil and Neumann, Gustaf (2020) End-user Empowerment: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. In: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2020, Jan 7, 2020 – Jan 10, 2020, Hawaii, United States.

Abstract:

In virtue of fast spreading emerging technologies, considering end-user empowerment (or human empowerment) while developing or adapting technologies gains importance. Even though many different approaches to end-user empowerment have been proposed, it is hardly clear what “end-user (human) empowerment” is and how it is possible to develop “end-user empowering systems”. This paper offers an interdisciplinary perspective on how it can be possible to arrive at a synthesized concept of end-user empowerment, in particular regarding the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The provided interdisciplinary perspective includes concepts from Computer Science, Information Systems, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Sociology, Science-Technology-Society, Design, System Science and Philosophy. Based on an interdisciplinary literature review, and from an enactivist, pluralist, and constructivist perspective, we argue that the individual end-users and their needs and values, as well as the environment (including socioeconomical contexts, other actors, etc.) and technologies they interact with, continuously co-create the conception of end-user empowerment. Moreover, we propose that perceiving technological development as co-creation, and considering technologies as value-bearers could provide the first steps in the development of conceptual frameworks required for the development of end-user empowering systems.

Internet Governance

Kettemann, Internet Governance, in Jahnel et al. (Hrsg.), Internetrecht, 4. Auflage (Wien: Springer, 2020), 47-73.

Privacy CURE: Consent Comprehension Made Easy

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, Privacy CURE: Consent Comprehension Made Easy, 35rd International Conference on Information Security and Privacy Protection (IFIPSEC 2020)

Abstract:

Although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines several potential legal bases for personal data processing, in many cases data controllers, even when they are located outside the European Union (EU), will need to obtain consent from EU citizens for the processing of their personal data. Unfortunately, existing approaches for obtaining consent, such as pages of text followed by an agreement/disagreement mechanism, are neither specific nor informed. In order to address this challenge, we introduce our Consent reqUest useR intErface (CURE) prototype, which is based on the GDPR requirements and the interpretation of those requirements by the Article 29 Working Party (i.e., the predecessor of the European Data Protection Board). The CURE prototype provides transparency regarding personal data processing, more control via a
customization, and, based on the results of our usability evaluation, improves user comprehension with respect to what data subjects actually consent to. Although the CURE prototype is based on the GDPR requirements, it could potentially be used in other jurisdictions also.

Do Smartphone Apps Influence Mode ChoiceBehavior among Viennese Citizens?

Wagner, Ben  and Winkler, Till  and Human, Soheil and Peer, Stefanie (2020) Do Smartphone Apps Influence Mode ChoiceBehavior among Viennese Citizens?

Menschenrechte und politische Teilhabe im digitalen Zeitalter

Kettemann, Menschenrechte und politische Teilhabe im digitalen Zeitalter. Stellungnahme als Sachverständiger auf Einladung des Ausschusses für Menschenrechte und humanitäre Hilfe des Deutschen Bundestags. Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut (Arbeitspapiere des Hans-Bredow-Instituts | Works in Progress # 2), 17. Juni 2020, https://leibniz-hbi.de/de/publikationen/menschenrechte-und-politische-teilhabe-im-digitalen-zeitalter

Zum Zusammenhang von Digitalisierung, Cybersecurity und Demokratisierung

Kettemann, Zum Zusammenhang von Digitalisierung, Cybersecurity und Demokratisierung, in Ursula Werther-Pietsch, Kollektive Sicherheit 2030 – Globale Friedenssicherung im Wandel (Wien: Landesverteidigungsakademie, 2020), 96-99, https://www.bundesheer.at/pdf_pool/publikationen/buch_werther_pietsch_kollektive_sicherheit_2030_web.pdf

Automation and illegal content: can we rely on machines making decisions for us?

Pirkova/Simon, Automation and illegal content: can we rely on machines making decisions for us? (2020).

Made in Europe: Concept and Critique of the Role of Europe as a Global Internet Standard-Setter in Light of the GDPR (and the Network Enforcement Act)

Kettemann/Wittner, Made in Europe: Concept and Critique of the Role of Europe as a Global Internet Standard-Setter in Light of the GDPR  (and the Network Enforcement Act), ZaöRV (2020)

Misguided ‘solution’ to terrorist content will have bad consequences for our rights

Pirkova/Simon, Misguided ‘solution’ to terrorist content will have bad consequences for our rights (Euractiv, 2020).

Facebook’s Norm-Making System: Results of a Pilot Study

Facebook’s Norm-Making System: Results of a Pilot Study (Hamburg: Working Papers of the Hans-Bredow-Institut, Works in Progress # 1, 2020).

Abstract:

This paper presents the outcome of a pilot study into the private order of communication developed by a major social network provider, Facebook Inc., and its policy development process. It is part of a broader research focus on the evolution and application, the legitimacy and contestation of norms in private online communication spaces and their public impact, both in terms of individual rights and societal cohesion. With first-of-a-kind access to the internal processes of policy development (norm production), researchers were able to study the development of content-related policies through phases of participant observation, expert interviews, and normative analyses. The first insights developed in this case study already make an important contribution to the understanding of the challenges posed by creating private rules for what are essentially global digital communication spheres, the interactions between rule-making processes within and outside Facebook, Inc., as a popular social media company that sets rules for 2.7 billion users, and the (self)-conception (and production) of legitimacy in norm-development through proceduralization and external stakeholder involvement. Facebook, we find in this case study, is developing its own normative order; its norms (community standards) are closely intertwined with its platform. It is the Product Policy team that is involved in developing norms. This is no accident. National legal systems need to be more intricately connected to the diversified (and still diversifying) order(s) of private communication.

Who should decide what we see online?

Pirkova/Simon, Who should decide what we see online? (2020).

Navigating Normative Orders. Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Kettemann (ed.), Navigating Normative Orders. Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, May 2020).

The Normative Order of the Internet. A Theory of Online Rule and Regulation

Kettemann, The Normative Order of the Internet. A Theory of Online Rule and Regulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2020).

Freedom of Expression on the Internet

Benedek/Kettemann, Freedom of Expression on the Internet (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2014, 2nd ed. 2020, translations into French, Turkish, Ukrainian).

[How] Can Pluralist Approaches to Computational Cognitive Modeling of Human Needs and Values Save our Democracies?

Human, Soheil and Neumann, Gustaf and Peschl, Markus F. (2019) [How] Can Pluralist Approaches to Computational Cognitive Modeling of Human Needs and Values Save our Democracies? Intellectica (70). pp. 165-180. ISSN 0769-4113.

A decade of Semantic Web research through the lenses of a mixed methods approach

Sabrina Kirrane, Marta Sabou, Javier D. Fernández, Francesco Osborne, Cécile Robin, Paul Buitelaar, Enrico Motta, and Axel Polleres, A decade of Semantic Web research through the lenses of a mixed methods approach, The Semantic Web Journal, accepted in 2019 (to appear)

Die Weltordnung des Digitalen

Kettemann, Die Weltordnung des Digitalen, Vereinte Nationen. Zeitschrift für die Vereinten Nationen und ihre Sonderorganisationen/German Review on the United Nations 5/2019, 195-200.

Consent Comprehension Made Easy Demo

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, Consent Comprehension Made Easy Demo, Open Day for Privacy, Usability, and Transparency (PUT 2019) co-located with the 19th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium

Knowledge graphs: New directions for knowledge representation on the semantic web (dagstuhl seminar 18371)

Bonatti, P. A., Decker, S., Polleres, A., & Presutti, V. (2019). Knowledge graphs: New directions for knowledge representation on the semantic web (dagstuhl seminar 18371). In Dagstuhl reports (Vol. 8, No. 9). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik.

Abstract:

The increasingly pervasive nature of the Web, expanding to devices and things in everyday life, along with new trends in Artificial Intelligence call for new paradigms and a new look on Knowledge Representation and Processing at scale for the Semantic Web. The emerging, but still to be concretely shaped concept of” Knowledge Graphs” provides an excellent unifying metaphor for this current status of Semantic Web research. More than two decades of Semantic Web research provides a solid basis and a promising technology and standards stack to interlink data, ontologies and knowledge on the Web. However, neither are applications for Knowledge Graphs as such limited to Linked Open Data, nor are instantiations of Knowledge Graphs in enterprises-while often inspired by-limited to the core Semantic Web stack. This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 18371″ Knowledge Graphs: New Directions for Knowledge Representation on the Semantic Web”, where a group of experts from academia and industry discussed fundamental questions around these topics for a week in early September 2018, including the following: what are knowledge graphs? Which applications do we see to emerge? Which open research questions still need be addressed and which technology gaps still need to be closed?

Follow-up to the Comparative Study on Blocking Filtering and Take-down of Illegal Internet Content

Kettemann, Follow-up to the Comparative Study on Blocking Filtering and Take-down of Illegal Internet Content (Country Report for Germany 2016-2019) (Strassburg: Europarat, 2019), https://rm.coe.int/dgi-2019-update-chapter-germany-study-on-blocking-and-filtering/168097ac51.

Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, I Agree: Customize your Personal Data Processing with the CoRe User Interface, Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business (TrustBus 2019)

Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation

Kleinwächter/Kettemann/Senges (Hrsg.), Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation. An Agenda for the 2020s (Berlin: BMWi, Nov. 2019) (online OA at https://leibniz-hbi.de/de/publikationen/towards-a-global-framework-for-cyber-peace-and-digital-cooperation)

Information & Disinformation

Kettemann, Good news, bad news, fake news, real news. The importance of trust in the age of information, disinformation and misinformation,in Missions Publiques, Briefing materials for International Citizens’ Debates – „We, the Internet“, Paris/Berlin (October 2019), https://intgovwiki.org/w/index.php/Information_and_Disinformation.

No summer break for free expression in Europe: Facebook cases that matter for human rights

Pirkova, No summer break for free expression in Europe: Facebook cases that matter for human rights (2019)

International Rules for Social Media
Safeguarding human rights, combating disinformation

Kettemann, International Rules for Social Media. Safeguarding human rights, combating disinformation, Global Governance Spotlight 2/2019 (Development and Peace Foundation (sef:), Bonn, 2019), https://www.sef-bonn.org/en/publications/global-governance-spotlight/22019.html.

Abstract:

With only a few weeks left before the elections to the European Parliament, there is widespread concern about the impact of online disinformation campaigns and hate speech. Various initiatives at the European and global level seek to curb the distribution of false and defamatory information through the establishment of new normative and regulative frameworks. In this paper, Matthias C. Kettemann looks at the strengths and weaknesses of these initiatives from an international law perspective. In his conclusion, he proposes five guidelines for combating disinformation without compromising on human rights.

Many Worlds, Many Nets, Many Visions

Mosene/Kettemann (eds.), Many Worlds. Many Nets. Many Visions. Critical Voices, Visions and Vectors for Internet Governance (Berlin: HIIG, 2019) (https://www.hiig.de/publication/many-worlds-many-nets-many-visions)

Abstract:

The Internet is a place of contrasts. Consider this: In 1996 John Perry Barlow wrote in his Declaration on the Independence of Cyberspace that “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” A world that all can enter on an equal footing? Can this be true? Has such a world emerged? A world where discrimination has no place, where freedom of expression reigns, where fear has no place? How can these beautiful words be made to fit the lived experience of so many all across the world?

Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology

Wagner/Kettemann/Vieth (eds.), Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology. Global Politics, Law and International Relations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019).

More information:

In a digitally connected world, the question of how to respect, protect and implement human rights has become unavoidable. This contemporary Research Handbook offers new insights into well-established debates by framing them in terms of human rights. It examines the issues posed by the management of key Internet resources, the governance of its architecture, the role of different stakeholders, the legitimacy of rule making and rule-enforcement, and the exercise of international public authority over users. Highly interdisciplinary, its contributions draw on law, political science, international relations and even computer science and science and technology studies.

Human Rights, Digital Society and the Law

Kettemann/Benedek, Freedom of expression online, in Mart Susi (Hrsg.), Human Rights, Digital Society and the Law. A Research Companion (London: Routledge, 2019), 58-74.

‌Book Description:

The Internet has created a formidable challenge for human rights law and practice worldwide. International scholarly and policy-oriented communities have so far established a consensus regarding only one main aspect – human rights in the internet are the same as offline. There are emerging and ongoing debates regarding not only the standards and methods to be used for achieving the “sameness” of rights online, but also whether “classical” human rights as we know them are contested by the online environment. The internet itself, in view of its cross-border nature and its ability to affect various areas of law, requires adopting an internationally oriented approach and a perspective strongly focused on social sciences. In particular, the rise of the internet, enhanced also by the influence of new technologies such as algorithms and intelligent artificial systems, has influenced individuals’ civil, political and social rights not only in the digital world, but also in the atomic realm. As the coming of the internet calls into question well-established legal categories, a broader perspective than the domestic one is necessary to investigate this phenomenon.

This book explores the main fundamental issues and practical dimensions related to the safeguarding of human rights in the internet, which are at the focus of current academic debates. It provides a comprehensive analysis with a forward-looking perspective of bringing order into the somewhat chaotic online dimension of human rights. It addresses the matter of private digital censorship, the apparent inefficiency of existing judicial systems to react to human rights violations online, the uncertainty of liability for online human rights violations, whether the concern with personal data protection overshadows multiple other human rights issues online and will be of value to those interested in human rights law and legal regulation of the internet.

Busted! The Truth About the 50 Most Common Internet Myths

Kettemann/Dreyer (Hrsg.), Busted! The Truth About the 50 Most Common Internet Myths (Berlin: BMWi/Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut, Nov. 2019) (online OA at https://www.internetmyths.eu).

‌Book Description:

This anthology clears up misconceptions about the Internet and summarises what we really know about the online world. The editors Matthias C. Kettemann and Stephan Dreyer have embarked on a search for the 50 most common Internet myths and asked Internet experts from Africa, America, Asia and Europe to disprove these myths in a concise form.

Back up: Can Users Sue Platforms to Reinstate Deleted Content?

Kettemann/Tiedeke, Back up: Can Users Sue Platforms to Reinstate Deleted Content?  A Comparative Study of US and German Jurisprudence on “Must Carry”, GigaNet Symposion Research Paper (2019).

‌Abstract:

A private order of public communication has emerged. As social network services fulfill important communicative functions in political communication processes, the question of public interest and public law-based limits to their private power has to be carefully considered. A lot has been written about the failings of companies in deleting problematic content. This paper flips the question and asks under which conditions users can sue to reinstate content and under which circumstances courts have recognized ‘must carry’ obligations for social network services. We will analyze this question looking at a selection of US and German court cases on the question of reinstatement of accounts and republication of deleted posts, videos and tweets. We will draw out the differences in constitutional and statutory law and explain the divergence. Our analysis will also point to a larger issue of systemic relevance, namely the differences in treatment of states and private companies as threats to and/or guarantors of fundamental rights in the jurisdictions under comparison. Finally, we will show why it is important to not think about private ordering of communication as separate (or even separable) from the public interest.

“This is Not a Drill”: International Law and Protection of Cybersecurity

Kettemann, “This is Not a Drill”: International Law and Protection of Cybersecurity, in Wagner/Kettemann/Vieth (eds.), Research Handbook of Human Rights and Digital Technology (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019), 113-128.

Intelligent Agents: The Vision Revisited

Sabrina Kirrane and Stefan Decker, Intelligent Agents: The Vision Revisited, Workshop on Decentralizing the Semantic Web (DeSemWeb2018) @ The 17th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2018)

Enabling Personal Data Processing Control via Dynamic Consent

Olha Drozd, Rigo Wenning and Sabrina Kirrane, Enabling Personal Data Processing Control via Dynamic Consent, Open Day for Privacy, Transparency and Decentralization (OPERANDI 2018) @ PETS2018

A Scalable Consent, Transparency and Compliance Architecture

Sabrina Kirrane, Javier D. Fernández, Wouter Dullaert, Uros Milosevic, Axel Polleres, Piero Bonatti, Rigo Wenning, Olha Drozd and Philip Raschke, A Scalable Consent, Transparency and Compliance Architecture, Proceedings of the Posters and Demos Track of the Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2018)

Privacy, security and policies: A review of problems and solutions with semantic web technologies

Sabrina Kirrane, Serena Villata, and Mathieu d’Aquin, Privacy, security and policies: A review of problems and solutions with semantic web technologies, The Semantic Web Journal, 2018

Supporting Pluralism by Artificial Intelligence: Conceptualizing Epistemic Disagreements as Digital Artifacts

Human, S., Bidabadi, G., & Savenkov, V. (2018). Supporting pluralism by artificial intelligence: Conceptualizing epistemic disagreements as digital artifacts. In Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2017 (pp. 190-193). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

A crucial concept in philosophy and social sciences, epistemic disagreement, has not yet been adequately reflected in the Web. In this paper, we call for development of intelligent tools dealing with epistemic disagreements on the Web to support pluralism. As a first step, we present POLYPHONY, an ontology for representing and annotating epistemic disagreements.

Legislative compliance assessment: framework, model and GDPR instantiation

Agarwal, S., Steyskal, S., Antunovic, F., & Kirrane, S. (2018). Legislative compliance assessment: framework, model and GDPR instantiation. In Privacy Technologies and Policy: 6th Annual Privacy Forum, APF 2018, Barcelona, Spain, June 13-14, 2018, Revised Selected Papers 6 (pp. 131-149). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

Legislative compliance assessment tools are commonly used by companies to help them to understand their legal obligations. One of the primary limitations of existing tools is that they tend to consider each regulation in isolation. In this paper, we propose a flexible and modular compliance assessment framework that can support multiple legislations. Additionally, we describe our extension of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) so that it can be used not only to represent digital rights but also legislative obligations, and discuss how the proposed model is used to develop a flexible compliance system, where changes to the obligations are automatically reflected in the compliance assessment tool. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach through the development of a General Data Protection Regulatory model and compliance assessment tool.

Designing a GDPR-compliant and Usable Privacy Dashboard

Raschke, P., Küpper, A., Drozd, O., & Kirrane, S. (2018). Designing a GDPR-compliant and usable privacy dashboard. Privacy and Identity Management. The Smart Revolution: 12th IFIP WG 9.2, 9.5, 9.6/11.7, 11.6/SIG 9.2. 2 International Summer School, Ispra, Italy, September 4-8, 2017, Revised Selected Papers 12, 221-236.

‌Abstract:

The role of personal data gained significance across all business domains in past decades. Despite strict legal restrictions that processing personal data is subject to, users tend to respond to the extensive collection of data by service providers with distrust. Legal battles between data subjects and processors emphasized the need of adaptations by the current law to face today’s challenges. The European Union has taken action by introducing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was adopted in April 2016 and will inure in May 2018. The GDPR extends existing data privacy rights of EU citizens and simultaneously puts pressure on controllers and processors by defining high penalties in case of non-compliance. Uncertainties remain to which extent controllers and processors need to adjust their existing technologies in order to conform to the new law. This work designs, implements, and evaluates a privacy dashboard for data subjects intending to enable and ease the execution of data privacy rights granted by the GDPR.

Ontology for Representing Human Needs

Human, S., Fahrenbach, F., Kragulj, F., & Savenkov, V. (2017). Ontology for representing human needs. In Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web: 8th International Conference, KESW 2017, Szczecin, Poland, November 8-10, 2017, Proceedings 8 (pp. 195-210). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

Need satisfaction plays a fundamental role in human well-being. Hence understanding citizens’ needs is crucial for developing a successful social and economic policy. This notwithstanding, the concept of need has not yet found its place in information systems and online tools. Furthermore, assessing needs itself remains a labor-intensive, mostly offline activity, where only a limited support by computational tools is available. In this paper, we make the first step towards employing need management in the design of information systems supporting participation and participatory innovation by proposing OpeNeeD, a family of ontologies for representing human needs data. As a proof of concept, OpeNeeD has been used to represent, enrich and query the results of a needs assessment study in a local citizen community in one of the Vienna districts. The proposed ontology will facilitate such studies and enable the representation of citizens’ needs as Linked Data, fostering its co-creation and incentivizing the use of Open Data and services based on it.

Your Consent Is Worth 75 Euros A Year — Measurement and Lawfulness of Cookie Paywalls

Morel, V., Santos, C., Lintao, Y., & Human, S. (2022, November). Your Consent Is Worth 75 Euros A Year-Measurement and Lawfulness of Cookie Paywalls. In Proceedings of the 21st Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (pp. 213-218).

Abstract:

Most websites offer their content for free, though this gratuity often comes with a counterpart: personal data is collected to finance these websites by resorting, mostly, to tracking and thus targeted advertising. Cookie walls and paywalls, used to retrieve consent, recently generated interest from EU DPAs and seemed to have grown in popularity. However, they have been overlooked by scholars. We present in this paper 1) the results of an exploratory study conducted on 2800 Central European websites to measure the presence and practices of cookie paywalls, and 2) a framing of their lawfulness amidst the variety of legal decisions and guidelines.

Human-centric Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems: Towards a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Alt, R., Habibnia, H., & Neumann, G. (2022). Human-centric Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems: Towards a Sustainable Digital Economy.

Abstract:

With the growing digital transformation, increasingly more personal data is produced, collected, shared, and used. Online privacy has become one of the most significant challenges for co-creating digital artefacts in a sustainable digital world. This paper presents the results of a representative study on online privacy conducted in Austria, which shows a growing need for personalized and human-centric sociotechnical solutions which empower humans to exercise their rights to online privacy, consenting and agency. We call such systems Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems (PDPCAS). Using a human-centric perspective on privacy and consenting, which is inspired by recent advancements in cognitive sciences and sociology of science and technology, as well as the results of our representative study, combined with the results of a set of interdisciplinary expert interviews, we provide a reflection on PDPCASs, which mainly includes the functional and non-functional requirements of such systems. Based on the results of our studies, we reflect on the main challenges for the development and adaptation of PDPCASs. We argue that besides the absence of supporting automation standards, the lack of enforceability, and the technical complexities of developing human-centric PDPCASs, the user-acceptance and user experience design pose significant challenges to realizing these systems in practice. Finally, the paper provides a short reflection on the importance of human-centric PDPCASs for the co-creation of a sustainable digital economy.

Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms: Current Open Proposals and Challenges

Human, S., Pandit, H. J., Morel, V., Santos, C., Degeling, M., Rossi, A., … & Kamara, I. (2022, June). Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms: Current Open Proposals and Challenges. In 2022 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW) (pp. 231-239). IEEE.

Abstract:

Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms (DPCCMs) enable users to express their privacy decisions and manage their online consent. Thus, they can become a crucial means of protecting individuals’ online privacy and agency, thereby replacing the current problematic practices such as “consent dialogues”. Based on an in-depth analysis of different DPCCMs, we propose an interdisciplinary set of factors that can be used for a comparison of such mechanisms. Moreover, we use the results from a qualitative expert study to identify some of the main multidisciplinary challenges that DPCCMs should address to become widely adopted data privacy mechanisms. We leverage both the factors and the challenges to compare two current open specifications, i.e. the Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC) and the Global Privacy Control (GPC), and discuss future work.

A Call for Interdisciplinary Research on Applied Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Neumann, G., & Alt, R. (2022). A call for interdisciplinary research on applied human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy. In Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 4695-4696).

Abstract:

Human-centricity is a fundamental aspect of a sustainable digital transformation. While the importance of human-centricity has been widely discussed, the field still lacks commonly accepted interdisciplinary definitions, concepts, evaluation methodologies, and realization approaches. We call for more interdisciplinary research and collaboration towards the co-creation of “applied human-centricity” in real-world sustainable digital environments.

Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC): An Interdisciplinary Overview

Human, S. (2022). Advanced data protection control (adpc): An interdisciplinary overview. arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.09724.

Abstract:

The Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC) is a technical specification – and a set of sociotechnical mechanisms surrounding it – that can change the current practice of Internet-based personal data protection and consenting by providing novel and standardized means for the communication of privacy and consenting data, meta-data, information, requests, preferences, and decisions. The ADPC supports humans in practicing their rights to privacy and agency by giving them more human-centric control over the processing of their personal data and consent. It helps the data controllers to improve their users’ experiences and provides them with easy-to-adopt means to comply with the relevant legal and ethical requirements and expectations.

Contextuality and Intersectionality of E-Consent: A Human-centric Reflection on Digital Consenting in the Emerging Genetic Data Markets

Human, S., & Kazzazi, M. (2021, September). Contextuality and intersectionality of e-consent: A human-centric reflection on digital consenting in the emerging genetic data markets. In 2021 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW) (pp. 307-311). IEEE.

Abstract:

Consent plays an essential role in different digital regulations, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As a result, obtaining consent from data subjects (e.g. end-users or end-customers) are widely practised by many data controllers (e.g. service providers, companies, or organisations). Considering the importance and the widespread practice of consent-obtaining in different domains, critical and interdisciplinary studies of the current consent-obtaining mechanisms are highly needed. In this paper, we first shortly discuss an interdisciplinary human-centric perspective to consenting and propose that, among others, the contextuality of consent, as well as the potential intersectionality of consent, should be carefully considered in the development of consent-obtaining mechanisms. Then we elaborate on the distinction between “consent to personal data processing for commercial purposes” and “consent to personal data donations intended for research” in the field of direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC-GT). We show that based on our human-centric perspective, the contextuality and intersectionality of consent are sometimes overlooked in the current DTC-GT services, which are of considerable significance in the emerging genetic data markets. We hope that this paper can contribute towards the development of human-centric, accountable, lawful, and ethical (HALE) sociotechnical information systems dealing with consent and privacy management as fundamental building blocks of a sustainable digital economy.

Bias in Geographic Information Systems: The Case of Google Maps

Wagner, B., Winkler, T., & Human, S. (2021). Bias in Geographic Information Systems: The Case of Google Maps.

Abstract:

Users’ perception of geographic space depends heavily on geographic information systems (GIS). GIS are the most common way for users to estimate travel time, provide routing information and recommend appropriate forms of transportation. This article analyses how predictions made by Google Maps, one of the most popular GIS, influence users’ perceptions and travel choices. To analyze this influence, a pre-study in a classroom setting (n=36) as well as an online survey (n=521) were conducted. We study users intuitive perception of travel time, before using the Google Maps Mobile App as a ’treatment’ to see how it influences their perceptions of travel time and choice of transportation type. We then contrast this original Google Maps treatment to a mock-up ’warning label version’ of Google which informs users about biases in Google Maps and an ’unbiased version’ of Google Maps based on ground truth data. Our analysis suggests that Google Maps systematically underestimates necessary car driving time, which has an impact on users’ choice of transportation.

Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Neumann, G., & Alt, R. (2021). Human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy.

Abstract:

Human-centricity is arguably one of the fundamental aspects of a sustainable digital economy. The goal of this minitrack is to advance the level of understanding of what human-centricity and sustainable digital economy are, to identify the main interdisciplinary challenges for the realization of human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy, and to provide the best-practice case studies on how human-centricity and sustainability may be achieved in specific domains.

Knowledge Graphs

Aidan Hogan, Eva Blomqvist, Michael Cochez, Claudia d’Amato, Gerard De Melo, Claudio Gutierrez, Sabrina Kirrane, José Emilio Labra Gayo, Roberto Navigli, Sebastian Neumaier, 2021. Knowledge graphs. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 54, 4 (2021), 1–37.

Abstract:

In this article, we provide a comprehensive introduction to knowledge graphs, which have recently garnered significant attention from both industry and academia in scenarios that require exploiting diverse, dynamic, large-scale collections of data. After some opening remarks, we motivate and contrast various graph-based data models, as well as languages used to query and validate knowledge graphs. We explain how knowledge can be represented and extracted using a combination of deductive and inductive techniques. We conclude with high-level future research directions for knowledge graphs.

The linked legal data landscape: linking legal data across different countries

Filtz, E., Kirrane, S., & Polleres, A. (2021). The linked legal data landscape: linking legal data across different countries. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 29(4), 485-539.

Abstract:

The European Union is working towards harmonizing legislation across Europe, in order to improve cross-border interchange of legal information. This goal is supported for instance via standards such as the European Law Identifier (ELI) and the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI), which provide technical specifications for Web identifiers and suggestions for vocabularies to be used to describe metadata pertaining to legal documents in a machine readable format. Notably, these ECLI and ELI metadata standards adhere to the RDF data format which forms the basis of Linked Data, and therefore have the potential to form a basis for a pan-European legal Knowledge Graph. Unfortunately, to date said specifications have only been partially adopted by EU member states. In this paper we describe a methodology to transform the existing legal information system used in Austria to such a legal knowledge graph covering different steps from modeling national specific aspects, to population, and finally the integration of legal data from other countries through linked data. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by exemplifying practical use cases from legal information search, which are not possible in an automated fashion so far.

A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM

Human, Soheil and Cech, Florian (2020) A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM. In: Human Centred Intelligent Systems 2020, Jun 17, 2020 – Jun 19, 2020.

Abstract:

According to different legal frameworks such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an end-user’s consent constitutes one of the well-known legal bases for personal data processing. However, research has indicated that the majority of end-users have difficulty in understanding what they are consenting to in the digital world. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that marginalized people are confronted with even more difficulties when dealing with their own digital privacy. In this research, we use an enactivist perspective from cognitive science to develop a basic human-centric framework for digital consenting. We argue that the action of consenting is a sociocognitive action and includes cognitive, collective, and contextual aspects. Based on the developed theoretical framework, we present our qualitative evaluation of the consent-obtaining mechanisms implemented and used by the five big tech companies, i.e. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM). The evaluation shows that these companies have failed in their efforts to empower end-users by considering the human-centric aspects of the action of consenting. We use this approach to argue that their consent-obtaining mechanisms violate principles of fairness, accountability and transparency. We then suggest that our approach may raise doubts about the lawfulness of the obtained consent—particularly considering the basic requirements of lawful consent within the legal framework of the GDPR.

Machine Understandable Policies and GDPR Compliance Checking

Internet Governance

Kettemann, Internet Governance, in Jahnel et al. (Hrsg.), Internetrecht, 4. Auflage (Wien: Springer, 2020), 47-73

The SPECIAL-K Personal Data Processing Transparency and Compliance Platform

Abstract:

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) brings new challenges for companies, who must provide transparency with respect to personal data processing and sharing within and between organisations. Additionally companies need to demonstrate that their systems and business processes comply with usage constraints specified by data subjects. This paper first presents the Linked Data ontologies and vocabularies developed within the SPECIAL EU H2020 project, which can be used to represent data usage policies and data processing and sharing events, including the consent provided by the data subject and subsequent changes to or revocation of said consent. Following on from this, we propose a concrete transparency and compliance architecture, referred to as SPECIAL-K, that can automatically verify that data processing and sharing complies with the relevant usage control policies. Our evaluation, based on a new transparency and compliance benchmark, shows the efficiency and scalability of the system with increasing number of events and users, covering a wide range of real-world streaming and batch processing scenarios.

Ein Menschenrechts-Update für das Internet

Kettemann, Ein Menschenrechts-Update für das Internet, Tagesspiegel Background Digitalisierung & KI, 17.6.2020, https://background.tagesspiegel.de/digitalisierung/ein-menschenrechts-update-fuer-das-internet.

Abstract:

Deutschland hat jetzt eine einzigartige Chance, global für eine menschenrechtsbasierte und entwicklungsorientierte Internetpolitik einzutreten. Gerade Corona hat gezeigt, wie wichtig digitale Rechte sind. Zeit für ein Update, schreibt Matthias Kettemann.

End-user Empowerment: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Gsenger, Rita, and Human, Soheil and Neumann, Gustaf (2020) End-user Empowerment: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. In: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2020, Jan 7, 2020 – Jan 10, 2020, Hawaii, United States.

Abstract:

In virtue of fast spreading emerging technologies, considering end-user empowerment (or human empowerment) while developing or adapting technologies gains importance. Even though many different approaches to end-user empowerment have been proposed, it is hardly clear what “end-user (human) empowerment” is and how it is possible to develop “end-user empowering systems”. This paper offers an interdisciplinary perspective on how it can be possible to arrive at a synthesized concept of end-user empowerment, in particular regarding the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The provided interdisciplinary perspective includes concepts from Computer Science, Information Systems, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Sociology, Science-Technology-Society, Design, System Science and Philosophy. Based on an interdisciplinary literature review, and from an enactivist, pluralist, and constructivist perspective, we argue that the individual end-users and their needs and values, as well as the environment (including socioeconomical contexts, other actors, etc.) and technologies they interact with, continuously co-create the conception of end-user empowerment. Moreover, we propose that perceiving technological development as co-creation, and considering technologies as value-bearers could provide the first steps in the development of conceptual frameworks required for the development of end-user empowering systems.

Internet Governance

Kettemann, Internet Governance, in Jahnel et al. (Hrsg.), Internetrecht, 4. Auflage (Wien: Springer, 2020), 47-73.

Privacy CURE: Consent Comprehension Made Easy

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, Privacy CURE: Consent Comprehension Made Easy, 35rd International Conference on Information Security and Privacy Protection (IFIPSEC 2020)

Abstract:

Although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines several potential legal bases for personal data processing, in many cases data controllers, even when they are located outside the European Union (EU), will need to obtain consent from EU citizens for the processing of their personal data. Unfortunately, existing approaches for obtaining consent, such as pages of text followed by an agreement/disagreement mechanism, are neither specific nor informed. In order to address this challenge, we introduce our Consent reqUest useR intErface (CURE) prototype, which is based on the GDPR requirements and the interpretation of those requirements by the Article 29 Working Party (i.e., the predecessor of the European Data Protection Board). The CURE prototype provides transparency regarding personal data processing, more control via a
customization, and, based on the results of our usability evaluation, improves user comprehension with respect to what data subjects actually consent to. Although the CURE prototype is based on the GDPR requirements, it could potentially be used in other jurisdictions also.

Do Smartphone Apps Influence Mode ChoiceBehavior among Viennese Citizens?

Wagner, Ben  and Winkler, Till  and Human, Soheil and Peer, Stefanie (2020) Do Smartphone Apps Influence Mode ChoiceBehavior among Viennese Citizens?

Menschenrechte und politische Teilhabe im digitalen Zeitalter

Kettemann, Menschenrechte und politische Teilhabe im digitalen Zeitalter. Stellungnahme als Sachverständiger auf Einladung des Ausschusses für Menschenrechte und humanitäre Hilfe des Deutschen Bundestags. Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut (Arbeitspapiere des Hans-Bredow-Instituts | Works in Progress # 2), 17. Juni 2020, https://leibniz-hbi.de/de/publikationen/menschenrechte-und-politische-teilhabe-im-digitalen-zeitalter

Zum Zusammenhang von Digitalisierung, Cybersecurity und Demokratisierung

Kettemann, Zum Zusammenhang von Digitalisierung, Cybersecurity und Demokratisierung, in Ursula Werther-Pietsch, Kollektive Sicherheit 2030 – Globale Friedenssicherung im Wandel (Wien: Landesverteidigungsakademie, 2020), 96-99, https://www.bundesheer.at/pdf_pool/publikationen/buch_werther_pietsch_kollektive_sicherheit_2030_web.pdf

Automation and illegal content: can we rely on machines making decisions for us?

Pirkova/Simon, Automation and illegal content: can we rely on machines making decisions for us? (2020).

Made in Europe: Concept and Critique of the Role of Europe as a Global Internet Standard-Setter in Light of the GDPR (and the Network Enforcement Act)

Kettemann/Wittner, Made in Europe: Concept and Critique of the Role of Europe as a Global Internet Standard-Setter in Light of the GDPR  (and the Network Enforcement Act), ZaöRV (2020)

Misguided ‘solution’ to terrorist content will have bad consequences for our rights

Pirkova/Simon, Misguided ‘solution’ to terrorist content will have bad consequences for our rights (Euractiv, 2020).

Facebook’s Norm-Making System: Results of a Pilot Study

Facebook’s Norm-Making System: Results of a Pilot Study (Hamburg: Working Papers of the Hans-Bredow-Institut, Works in Progress # 1, 2020).

Abstract:

This paper presents the outcome of a pilot study into the private order of communication developed by a major social network provider, Facebook Inc., and its policy development process. It is part of a broader research focus on the evolution and application, the legitimacy and contestation of norms in private online communication spaces and their public impact, both in terms of individual rights and societal cohesion. With first-of-a-kind access to the internal processes of policy development (norm production), researchers were able to study the development of content-related policies through phases of participant observation, expert interviews, and normative analyses. The first insights developed in this case study already make an important contribution to the understanding of the challenges posed by creating private rules for what are essentially global digital communication spheres, the interactions between rule-making processes within and outside Facebook, Inc., as a popular social media company that sets rules for 2.7 billion users, and the (self)-conception (and production) of legitimacy in norm-development through proceduralization and external stakeholder involvement. Facebook, we find in this case study, is developing its own normative order; its norms (community standards) are closely intertwined with its platform. It is the Product Policy team that is involved in developing norms. This is no accident. National legal systems need to be more intricately connected to the diversified (and still diversifying) order(s) of private communication.

Who should decide what we see online?

Pirkova/Simon, Who should decide what we see online? (2020).

Navigating Normative Orders. Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Kettemann (ed.), Navigating Normative Orders. Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, May 2020).

The Normative Order of the Internet. A Theory of Online Rule and Regulation

Kettemann, The Normative Order of the Internet. A Theory of Online Rule and Regulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2020).

Freedom of Expression on the Internet

Benedek/Kettemann, Freedom of Expression on the Internet (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2014, 2nd ed. 2020, translations into French, Turkish, Ukrainian).

[How] Can Pluralist Approaches to Computational Cognitive Modeling of Human Needs and Values Save our Democracies?

Human, Soheil and Neumann, Gustaf and Peschl, Markus F. (2019) [How] Can Pluralist Approaches to Computational Cognitive Modeling of Human Needs and Values Save our Democracies? Intellectica (70). pp. 165-180. ISSN 0769-4113.

A decade of Semantic Web research through the lenses of a mixed methods approach

Sabrina Kirrane, Marta Sabou, Javier D. Fernández, Francesco Osborne, Cécile Robin, Paul Buitelaar, Enrico Motta, and Axel Polleres, A decade of Semantic Web research through the lenses of a mixed methods approach, The Semantic Web Journal, accepted in 2019 (to appear)

Die Weltordnung des Digitalen

Kettemann, Die Weltordnung des Digitalen, Vereinte Nationen. Zeitschrift für die Vereinten Nationen und ihre Sonderorganisationen/German Review on the United Nations 5/2019, 195-200.

Consent Comprehension Made Easy Demo

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, Consent Comprehension Made Easy Demo, Open Day for Privacy, Usability, and Transparency (PUT 2019) co-located with the 19th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium

Knowledge graphs: New directions for knowledge representation on the semantic web (dagstuhl seminar 18371)

Bonatti, P. A., Decker, S., Polleres, A., & Presutti, V. (2019). Knowledge graphs: New directions for knowledge representation on the semantic web (dagstuhl seminar 18371). In Dagstuhl reports (Vol. 8, No. 9). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik.

Abstract:

The increasingly pervasive nature of the Web, expanding to devices and things in everyday life, along with new trends in Artificial Intelligence call for new paradigms and a new look on Knowledge Representation and Processing at scale for the Semantic Web. The emerging, but still to be concretely shaped concept of” Knowledge Graphs” provides an excellent unifying metaphor for this current status of Semantic Web research. More than two decades of Semantic Web research provides a solid basis and a promising technology and standards stack to interlink data, ontologies and knowledge on the Web. However, neither are applications for Knowledge Graphs as such limited to Linked Open Data, nor are instantiations of Knowledge Graphs in enterprises-while often inspired by-limited to the core Semantic Web stack. This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 18371″ Knowledge Graphs: New Directions for Knowledge Representation on the Semantic Web”, where a group of experts from academia and industry discussed fundamental questions around these topics for a week in early September 2018, including the following: what are knowledge graphs? Which applications do we see to emerge? Which open research questions still need be addressed and which technology gaps still need to be closed?

Follow-up to the Comparative Study on Blocking Filtering and Take-down of Illegal Internet Content

Kettemann, Follow-up to the Comparative Study on Blocking Filtering and Take-down of Illegal Internet Content (Country Report for Germany 2016-2019) (Strassburg: Europarat, 2019), https://rm.coe.int/dgi-2019-update-chapter-germany-study-on-blocking-and-filtering/168097ac51.

Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, I Agree: Customize your Personal Data Processing with the CoRe User Interface, Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business (TrustBus 2019)

Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation

Kleinwächter/Kettemann/Senges (Hrsg.), Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation. An Agenda for the 2020s (Berlin: BMWi, Nov. 2019) (online OA at https://leibniz-hbi.de/de/publikationen/towards-a-global-framework-for-cyber-peace-and-digital-cooperation)

Information & Disinformation

Kettemann, Good news, bad news, fake news, real news. The importance of trust in the age of information, disinformation and misinformation,in Missions Publiques, Briefing materials for International Citizens’ Debates – „We, the Internet“, Paris/Berlin (October 2019), https://intgovwiki.org/w/index.php/Information_and_Disinformation.

No summer break for free expression in Europe: Facebook cases that matter for human rights

Pirkova, No summer break for free expression in Europe: Facebook cases that matter for human rights (2019)

International Rules for Social Media
Safeguarding human rights, combating disinformation

Kettemann, International Rules for Social Media. Safeguarding human rights, combating disinformation, Global Governance Spotlight 2/2019 (Development and Peace Foundation (sef:), Bonn, 2019), https://www.sef-bonn.org/en/publications/global-governance-spotlight/22019.html.

Abstract:

With only a few weeks left before the elections to the European Parliament, there is widespread concern about the impact of online disinformation campaigns and hate speech. Various initiatives at the European and global level seek to curb the distribution of false and defamatory information through the establishment of new normative and regulative frameworks. In this paper, Matthias C. Kettemann looks at the strengths and weaknesses of these initiatives from an international law perspective. In his conclusion, he proposes five guidelines for combating disinformation without compromising on human rights.

Many Worlds, Many Nets, Many Visions

Mosene/Kettemann (eds.), Many Worlds. Many Nets. Many Visions. Critical Voices, Visions and Vectors for Internet Governance (Berlin: HIIG, 2019) (https://www.hiig.de/publication/many-worlds-many-nets-many-visions)

Abstract:

The Internet is a place of contrasts. Consider this: In 1996 John Perry Barlow wrote in his Declaration on the Independence of Cyberspace that “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” A world that all can enter on an equal footing? Can this be true? Has such a world emerged? A world where discrimination has no place, where freedom of expression reigns, where fear has no place? How can these beautiful words be made to fit the lived experience of so many all across the world?

Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology

Wagner/Kettemann/Vieth (eds.), Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology. Global Politics, Law and International Relations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019).

More information:

In a digitally connected world, the question of how to respect, protect and implement human rights has become unavoidable. This contemporary Research Handbook offers new insights into well-established debates by framing them in terms of human rights. It examines the issues posed by the management of key Internet resources, the governance of its architecture, the role of different stakeholders, the legitimacy of rule making and rule-enforcement, and the exercise of international public authority over users. Highly interdisciplinary, its contributions draw on law, political science, international relations and even computer science and science and technology studies.

Human Rights, Digital Society and the Law

Kettemann/Benedek, Freedom of expression online, in Mart Susi (Hrsg.), Human Rights, Digital Society and the Law. A Research Companion (London: Routledge, 2019), 58-74.

‌Book Description:

The Internet has created a formidable challenge for human rights law and practice worldwide. International scholarly and policy-oriented communities have so far established a consensus regarding only one main aspect – human rights in the internet are the same as offline. There are emerging and ongoing debates regarding not only the standards and methods to be used for achieving the “sameness” of rights online, but also whether “classical” human rights as we know them are contested by the online environment. The internet itself, in view of its cross-border nature and its ability to affect various areas of law, requires adopting an internationally oriented approach and a perspective strongly focused on social sciences. In particular, the rise of the internet, enhanced also by the influence of new technologies such as algorithms and intelligent artificial systems, has influenced individuals’ civil, political and social rights not only in the digital world, but also in the atomic realm. As the coming of the internet calls into question well-established legal categories, a broader perspective than the domestic one is necessary to investigate this phenomenon.

This book explores the main fundamental issues and practical dimensions related to the safeguarding of human rights in the internet, which are at the focus of current academic debates. It provides a comprehensive analysis with a forward-looking perspective of bringing order into the somewhat chaotic online dimension of human rights. It addresses the matter of private digital censorship, the apparent inefficiency of existing judicial systems to react to human rights violations online, the uncertainty of liability for online human rights violations, whether the concern with personal data protection overshadows multiple other human rights issues online and will be of value to those interested in human rights law and legal regulation of the internet.

Busted! The Truth About the 50 Most Common Internet Myths

Kettemann/Dreyer (Hrsg.), Busted! The Truth About the 50 Most Common Internet Myths (Berlin: BMWi/Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut, Nov. 2019) (online OA at https://www.internetmyths.eu).

‌Book Description:

This anthology clears up misconceptions about the Internet and summarises what we really know about the online world. The editors Matthias C. Kettemann and Stephan Dreyer have embarked on a search for the 50 most common Internet myths and asked Internet experts from Africa, America, Asia and Europe to disprove these myths in a concise form.

Back up: Can Users Sue Platforms to Reinstate Deleted Content?

Kettemann/Tiedeke, Back up: Can Users Sue Platforms to Reinstate Deleted Content?  A Comparative Study of US and German Jurisprudence on “Must Carry”, GigaNet Symposion Research Paper (2019).

‌Abstract:

A private order of public communication has emerged. As social network services fulfill important communicative functions in political communication processes, the question of public interest and public law-based limits to their private power has to be carefully considered. A lot has been written about the failings of companies in deleting problematic content. This paper flips the question and asks under which conditions users can sue to reinstate content and under which circumstances courts have recognized ‘must carry’ obligations for social network services. We will analyze this question looking at a selection of US and German court cases on the question of reinstatement of accounts and republication of deleted posts, videos and tweets. We will draw out the differences in constitutional and statutory law and explain the divergence. Our analysis will also point to a larger issue of systemic relevance, namely the differences in treatment of states and private companies as threats to and/or guarantors of fundamental rights in the jurisdictions under comparison. Finally, we will show why it is important to not think about private ordering of communication as separate (or even separable) from the public interest.

“This is Not a Drill”: International Law and Protection of Cybersecurity

Kettemann, “This is Not a Drill”: International Law and Protection of Cybersecurity, in Wagner/Kettemann/Vieth (eds.), Research Handbook of Human Rights and Digital Technology (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019), 113-128.

Intelligent Agents: The Vision Revisited

Sabrina Kirrane and Stefan Decker, Intelligent Agents: The Vision Revisited, Workshop on Decentralizing the Semantic Web (DeSemWeb2018) @ The 17th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2018)

Enabling Personal Data Processing Control via Dynamic Consent

Olha Drozd, Rigo Wenning and Sabrina Kirrane, Enabling Personal Data Processing Control via Dynamic Consent, Open Day for Privacy, Transparency and Decentralization (OPERANDI 2018) @ PETS2018

A Scalable Consent, Transparency and Compliance Architecture

Sabrina Kirrane, Javier D. Fernández, Wouter Dullaert, Uros Milosevic, Axel Polleres, Piero Bonatti, Rigo Wenning, Olha Drozd and Philip Raschke, A Scalable Consent, Transparency and Compliance Architecture, Proceedings of the Posters and Demos Track of the Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2018)

Privacy, security and policies: A review of problems and solutions with semantic web technologies

Sabrina Kirrane, Serena Villata, and Mathieu d’Aquin, Privacy, security and policies: A review of problems and solutions with semantic web technologies, The Semantic Web Journal, 2018

Supporting Pluralism by Artificial Intelligence: Conceptualizing Epistemic Disagreements as Digital Artifacts

Human, S., Bidabadi, G., & Savenkov, V. (2018). Supporting pluralism by artificial intelligence: Conceptualizing epistemic disagreements as digital artifacts. In Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2017 (pp. 190-193). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

A crucial concept in philosophy and social sciences, epistemic disagreement, has not yet been adequately reflected in the Web. In this paper, we call for development of intelligent tools dealing with epistemic disagreements on the Web to support pluralism. As a first step, we present POLYPHONY, an ontology for representing and annotating epistemic disagreements.

Legislative compliance assessment: framework, model and GDPR instantiation

Agarwal, S., Steyskal, S., Antunovic, F., & Kirrane, S. (2018). Legislative compliance assessment: framework, model and GDPR instantiation. In Privacy Technologies and Policy: 6th Annual Privacy Forum, APF 2018, Barcelona, Spain, June 13-14, 2018, Revised Selected Papers 6 (pp. 131-149). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

Legislative compliance assessment tools are commonly used by companies to help them to understand their legal obligations. One of the primary limitations of existing tools is that they tend to consider each regulation in isolation. In this paper, we propose a flexible and modular compliance assessment framework that can support multiple legislations. Additionally, we describe our extension of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) so that it can be used not only to represent digital rights but also legislative obligations, and discuss how the proposed model is used to develop a flexible compliance system, where changes to the obligations are automatically reflected in the compliance assessment tool. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach through the development of a General Data Protection Regulatory model and compliance assessment tool.

Designing a GDPR-compliant and Usable Privacy Dashboard

Raschke, P., Küpper, A., Drozd, O., & Kirrane, S. (2018). Designing a GDPR-compliant and usable privacy dashboard. Privacy and Identity Management. The Smart Revolution: 12th IFIP WG 9.2, 9.5, 9.6/11.7, 11.6/SIG 9.2. 2 International Summer School, Ispra, Italy, September 4-8, 2017, Revised Selected Papers 12, 221-236.

‌Abstract:

The role of personal data gained significance across all business domains in past decades. Despite strict legal restrictions that processing personal data is subject to, users tend to respond to the extensive collection of data by service providers with distrust. Legal battles between data subjects and processors emphasized the need of adaptations by the current law to face today’s challenges. The European Union has taken action by introducing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was adopted in April 2016 and will inure in May 2018. The GDPR extends existing data privacy rights of EU citizens and simultaneously puts pressure on controllers and processors by defining high penalties in case of non-compliance. Uncertainties remain to which extent controllers and processors need to adjust their existing technologies in order to conform to the new law. This work designs, implements, and evaluates a privacy dashboard for data subjects intending to enable and ease the execution of data privacy rights granted by the GDPR.

Ontology for Representing Human Needs

Human, S., Fahrenbach, F., Kragulj, F., & Savenkov, V. (2017). Ontology for representing human needs. In Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web: 8th International Conference, KESW 2017, Szczecin, Poland, November 8-10, 2017, Proceedings 8 (pp. 195-210). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

Need satisfaction plays a fundamental role in human well-being. Hence understanding citizens’ needs is crucial for developing a successful social and economic policy. This notwithstanding, the concept of need has not yet found its place in information systems and online tools. Furthermore, assessing needs itself remains a labor-intensive, mostly offline activity, where only a limited support by computational tools is available. In this paper, we make the first step towards employing need management in the design of information systems supporting participation and participatory innovation by proposing OpeNeeD, a family of ontologies for representing human needs data. As a proof of concept, OpeNeeD has been used to represent, enrich and query the results of a needs assessment study in a local citizen community in one of the Vienna districts. The proposed ontology will facilitate such studies and enable the representation of citizens’ needs as Linked Data, fostering its co-creation and incentivizing the use of Open Data and services based on it.

Your Consent Is Worth 75 Euros A Year — Measurement and Lawfulness of Cookie Paywalls

Morel, V., Santos, C., Lintao, Y., & Human, S. (2022, November). Your Consent Is Worth 75 Euros A Year-Measurement and Lawfulness of Cookie Paywalls. In Proceedings of the 21st Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (pp. 213-218).

Abstract:

Most websites offer their content for free, though this gratuity often comes with a counterpart: personal data is collected to finance these websites by resorting, mostly, to tracking and thus targeted advertising. Cookie walls and paywalls, used to retrieve consent, recently generated interest from EU DPAs and seemed to have grown in popularity. However, they have been overlooked by scholars. We present in this paper 1) the results of an exploratory study conducted on 2800 Central European websites to measure the presence and practices of cookie paywalls, and 2) a framing of their lawfulness amidst the variety of legal decisions and guidelines.

Human-centric Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems: Towards a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Alt, R., Habibnia, H., & Neumann, G. (2022). Human-centric Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems: Towards a Sustainable Digital Economy.

Abstract:

With the growing digital transformation, increasingly more personal data is produced, collected, shared, and used. Online privacy has become one of the most significant challenges for co-creating digital artefacts in a sustainable digital world. This paper presents the results of a representative study on online privacy conducted in Austria, which shows a growing need for personalized and human-centric sociotechnical solutions which empower humans to exercise their rights to online privacy, consenting and agency. We call such systems Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems (PDPCAS). Using a human-centric perspective on privacy and consenting, which is inspired by recent advancements in cognitive sciences and sociology of science and technology, as well as the results of our representative study, combined with the results of a set of interdisciplinary expert interviews, we provide a reflection on PDPCASs, which mainly includes the functional and non-functional requirements of such systems. Based on the results of our studies, we reflect on the main challenges for the development and adaptation of PDPCASs. We argue that besides the absence of supporting automation standards, the lack of enforceability, and the technical complexities of developing human-centric PDPCASs, the user-acceptance and user experience design pose significant challenges to realizing these systems in practice. Finally, the paper provides a short reflection on the importance of human-centric PDPCASs for the co-creation of a sustainable digital economy.

Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms: Current Open Proposals and Challenges

Human, S., Pandit, H. J., Morel, V., Santos, C., Degeling, M., Rossi, A., … & Kamara, I. (2022, June). Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms: Current Open Proposals and Challenges. In 2022 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW) (pp. 231-239). IEEE.

Abstract:

Data Protection and Consenting Communication Mechanisms (DPCCMs) enable users to express their privacy decisions and manage their online consent. Thus, they can become a crucial means of protecting individuals’ online privacy and agency, thereby replacing the current problematic practices such as “consent dialogues”. Based on an in-depth analysis of different DPCCMs, we propose an interdisciplinary set of factors that can be used for a comparison of such mechanisms. Moreover, we use the results from a qualitative expert study to identify some of the main multidisciplinary challenges that DPCCMs should address to become widely adopted data privacy mechanisms. We leverage both the factors and the challenges to compare two current open specifications, i.e. the Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC) and the Global Privacy Control (GPC), and discuss future work.

A Call for Interdisciplinary Research on Applied Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Neumann, G., & Alt, R. (2022). A call for interdisciplinary research on applied human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy. In Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 4695-4696).

Abstract:

Human-centricity is a fundamental aspect of a sustainable digital transformation. While the importance of human-centricity has been widely discussed, the field still lacks commonly accepted interdisciplinary definitions, concepts, evaluation methodologies, and realization approaches. We call for more interdisciplinary research and collaboration towards the co-creation of “applied human-centricity” in real-world sustainable digital environments.

Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC): An Interdisciplinary Overview

Human, S. (2022). Advanced data protection control (adpc): An interdisciplinary overview. arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.09724.

Abstract:

The Advanced Data Protection Control (ADPC) is a technical specification – and a set of sociotechnical mechanisms surrounding it – that can change the current practice of Internet-based personal data protection and consenting by providing novel and standardized means for the communication of privacy and consenting data, meta-data, information, requests, preferences, and decisions. The ADPC supports humans in practicing their rights to privacy and agency by giving them more human-centric control over the processing of their personal data and consent. It helps the data controllers to improve their users’ experiences and provides them with easy-to-adopt means to comply with the relevant legal and ethical requirements and expectations.

Contextuality and Intersectionality of E-Consent: A Human-centric Reflection on Digital Consenting in the Emerging Genetic Data Markets

Human, S., & Kazzazi, M. (2021, September). Contextuality and intersectionality of e-consent: A human-centric reflection on digital consenting in the emerging genetic data markets. In 2021 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW) (pp. 307-311). IEEE.

Abstract:

Consent plays an essential role in different digital regulations, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As a result, obtaining consent from data subjects (e.g. end-users or end-customers) are widely practised by many data controllers (e.g. service providers, companies, or organisations). Considering the importance and the widespread practice of consent-obtaining in different domains, critical and interdisciplinary studies of the current consent-obtaining mechanisms are highly needed. In this paper, we first shortly discuss an interdisciplinary human-centric perspective to consenting and propose that, among others, the contextuality of consent, as well as the potential intersectionality of consent, should be carefully considered in the development of consent-obtaining mechanisms. Then we elaborate on the distinction between “consent to personal data processing for commercial purposes” and “consent to personal data donations intended for research” in the field of direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC-GT). We show that based on our human-centric perspective, the contextuality and intersectionality of consent are sometimes overlooked in the current DTC-GT services, which are of considerable significance in the emerging genetic data markets. We hope that this paper can contribute towards the development of human-centric, accountable, lawful, and ethical (HALE) sociotechnical information systems dealing with consent and privacy management as fundamental building blocks of a sustainable digital economy.

Bias in Geographic Information Systems: The Case of Google Maps

Wagner, B., Winkler, T., & Human, S. (2021). Bias in Geographic Information Systems: The Case of Google Maps.

Abstract:

Users’ perception of geographic space depends heavily on geographic information systems (GIS). GIS are the most common way for users to estimate travel time, provide routing information and recommend appropriate forms of transportation. This article analyses how predictions made by Google Maps, one of the most popular GIS, influence users’ perceptions and travel choices. To analyze this influence, a pre-study in a classroom setting (n=36) as well as an online survey (n=521) were conducted. We study users intuitive perception of travel time, before using the Google Maps Mobile App as a ’treatment’ to see how it influences their perceptions of travel time and choice of transportation type. We then contrast this original Google Maps treatment to a mock-up ’warning label version’ of Google which informs users about biases in Google Maps and an ’unbiased version’ of Google Maps based on ground truth data. Our analysis suggests that Google Maps systematically underestimates necessary car driving time, which has an impact on users’ choice of transportation.

Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy

Human, S., Neumann, G., & Alt, R. (2021). Human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy.

Abstract:

Human-centricity is arguably one of the fundamental aspects of a sustainable digital economy. The goal of this minitrack is to advance the level of understanding of what human-centricity and sustainable digital economy are, to identify the main interdisciplinary challenges for the realization of human-centricity in a sustainable digital economy, and to provide the best-practice case studies on how human-centricity and sustainability may be achieved in specific domains.

Knowledge Graphs

Aidan Hogan, Eva Blomqvist, Michael Cochez, Claudia d’Amato, Gerard De Melo, Claudio Gutierrez, Sabrina Kirrane, José Emilio Labra Gayo, Roberto Navigli, Sebastian Neumaier, 2021. Knowledge graphs. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 54, 4 (2021), 1–37.

Abstract:

In this article, we provide a comprehensive introduction to knowledge graphs, which have recently garnered significant attention from both industry and academia in scenarios that require exploiting diverse, dynamic, large-scale collections of data. After some opening remarks, we motivate and contrast various graph-based data models, as well as languages used to query and validate knowledge graphs. We explain how knowledge can be represented and extracted using a combination of deductive and inductive techniques. We conclude with high-level future research directions for knowledge graphs.

The linked legal data landscape: linking legal data across different countries

Filtz, E., Kirrane, S., & Polleres, A. (2021). The linked legal data landscape: linking legal data across different countries. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 29(4), 485-539.

Abstract:

The European Union is working towards harmonizing legislation across Europe, in order to improve cross-border interchange of legal information. This goal is supported for instance via standards such as the European Law Identifier (ELI) and the European Case Law Identifier (ECLI), which provide technical specifications for Web identifiers and suggestions for vocabularies to be used to describe metadata pertaining to legal documents in a machine readable format. Notably, these ECLI and ELI metadata standards adhere to the RDF data format which forms the basis of Linked Data, and therefore have the potential to form a basis for a pan-European legal Knowledge Graph. Unfortunately, to date said specifications have only been partially adopted by EU member states. In this paper we describe a methodology to transform the existing legal information system used in Austria to such a legal knowledge graph covering different steps from modeling national specific aspects, to population, and finally the integration of legal data from other countries through linked data. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by exemplifying practical use cases from legal information search, which are not possible in an automated fashion so far.

A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM

Human, Soheil and Cech, Florian (2020) A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM. In: Human Centred Intelligent Systems 2020, Jun 17, 2020 – Jun 19, 2020.

Abstract:

According to different legal frameworks such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an end-user’s consent constitutes one of the well-known legal bases for personal data processing. However, research has indicated that the majority of end-users have difficulty in understanding what they are consenting to in the digital world. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that marginalized people are confronted with even more difficulties when dealing with their own digital privacy. In this research, we use an enactivist perspective from cognitive science to develop a basic human-centric framework for digital consenting. We argue that the action of consenting is a sociocognitive action and includes cognitive, collective, and contextual aspects. Based on the developed theoretical framework, we present our qualitative evaluation of the consent-obtaining mechanisms implemented and used by the five big tech companies, i.e. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM). The evaluation shows that these companies have failed in their efforts to empower end-users by considering the human-centric aspects of the action of consenting. We use this approach to argue that their consent-obtaining mechanisms violate principles of fairness, accountability and transparency. We then suggest that our approach may raise doubts about the lawfulness of the obtained consent—particularly considering the basic requirements of lawful consent within the legal framework of the GDPR.

Machine Understandable Policies and GDPR Compliance Checking

Internet Governance

Kettemann, Internet Governance, in Jahnel et al. (Hrsg.), Internetrecht, 4. Auflage (Wien: Springer, 2020), 47-73

The SPECIAL-K Personal Data Processing Transparency and Compliance Platform

Abstract:

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) brings new challenges for companies, who must provide transparency with respect to personal data processing and sharing within and between organisations. Additionally companies need to demonstrate that their systems and business processes comply with usage constraints specified by data subjects. This paper first presents the Linked Data ontologies and vocabularies developed within the SPECIAL EU H2020 project, which can be used to represent data usage policies and data processing and sharing events, including the consent provided by the data subject and subsequent changes to or revocation of said consent. Following on from this, we propose a concrete transparency and compliance architecture, referred to as SPECIAL-K, that can automatically verify that data processing and sharing complies with the relevant usage control policies. Our evaluation, based on a new transparency and compliance benchmark, shows the efficiency and scalability of the system with increasing number of events and users, covering a wide range of real-world streaming and batch processing scenarios.

Ein Menschenrechts-Update für das Internet

Kettemann, Ein Menschenrechts-Update für das Internet, Tagesspiegel Background Digitalisierung & KI, 17.6.2020, https://background.tagesspiegel.de/digitalisierung/ein-menschenrechts-update-fuer-das-internet.

Abstract:

Deutschland hat jetzt eine einzigartige Chance, global für eine menschenrechtsbasierte und entwicklungsorientierte Internetpolitik einzutreten. Gerade Corona hat gezeigt, wie wichtig digitale Rechte sind. Zeit für ein Update, schreibt Matthias Kettemann.

End-user Empowerment: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Gsenger, Rita, and Human, Soheil and Neumann, Gustaf (2020) End-user Empowerment: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. In: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2020, Jan 7, 2020 – Jan 10, 2020, Hawaii, United States.

Abstract:

In virtue of fast spreading emerging technologies, considering end-user empowerment (or human empowerment) while developing or adapting technologies gains importance. Even though many different approaches to end-user empowerment have been proposed, it is hardly clear what “end-user (human) empowerment” is and how it is possible to develop “end-user empowering systems”. This paper offers an interdisciplinary perspective on how it can be possible to arrive at a synthesized concept of end-user empowerment, in particular regarding the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The provided interdisciplinary perspective includes concepts from Computer Science, Information Systems, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Sociology, Science-Technology-Society, Design, System Science and Philosophy. Based on an interdisciplinary literature review, and from an enactivist, pluralist, and constructivist perspective, we argue that the individual end-users and their needs and values, as well as the environment (including socioeconomical contexts, other actors, etc.) and technologies they interact with, continuously co-create the conception of end-user empowerment. Moreover, we propose that perceiving technological development as co-creation, and considering technologies as value-bearers could provide the first steps in the development of conceptual frameworks required for the development of end-user empowering systems.

Internet Governance

Kettemann, Internet Governance, in Jahnel et al. (Hrsg.), Internetrecht, 4. Auflage (Wien: Springer, 2020), 47-73.

Privacy CURE: Consent Comprehension Made Easy

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, Privacy CURE: Consent Comprehension Made Easy, 35rd International Conference on Information Security and Privacy Protection (IFIPSEC 2020)

Abstract:

Although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines several potential legal bases for personal data processing, in many cases data controllers, even when they are located outside the European Union (EU), will need to obtain consent from EU citizens for the processing of their personal data. Unfortunately, existing approaches for obtaining consent, such as pages of text followed by an agreement/disagreement mechanism, are neither specific nor informed. In order to address this challenge, we introduce our Consent reqUest useR intErface (CURE) prototype, which is based on the GDPR requirements and the interpretation of those requirements by the Article 29 Working Party (i.e., the predecessor of the European Data Protection Board). The CURE prototype provides transparency regarding personal data processing, more control via a
customization, and, based on the results of our usability evaluation, improves user comprehension with respect to what data subjects actually consent to. Although the CURE prototype is based on the GDPR requirements, it could potentially be used in other jurisdictions also.

Do Smartphone Apps Influence Mode ChoiceBehavior among Viennese Citizens?

Wagner, Ben  and Winkler, Till  and Human, Soheil and Peer, Stefanie (2020) Do Smartphone Apps Influence Mode ChoiceBehavior among Viennese Citizens?

Menschenrechte und politische Teilhabe im digitalen Zeitalter

Kettemann, Menschenrechte und politische Teilhabe im digitalen Zeitalter. Stellungnahme als Sachverständiger auf Einladung des Ausschusses für Menschenrechte und humanitäre Hilfe des Deutschen Bundestags. Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut (Arbeitspapiere des Hans-Bredow-Instituts | Works in Progress # 2), 17. Juni 2020, https://leibniz-hbi.de/de/publikationen/menschenrechte-und-politische-teilhabe-im-digitalen-zeitalter

Zum Zusammenhang von Digitalisierung, Cybersecurity und Demokratisierung

Kettemann, Zum Zusammenhang von Digitalisierung, Cybersecurity und Demokratisierung, in Ursula Werther-Pietsch, Kollektive Sicherheit 2030 – Globale Friedenssicherung im Wandel (Wien: Landesverteidigungsakademie, 2020), 96-99, https://www.bundesheer.at/pdf_pool/publikationen/buch_werther_pietsch_kollektive_sicherheit_2030_web.pdf

Automation and illegal content: can we rely on machines making decisions for us?

Pirkova/Simon, Automation and illegal content: can we rely on machines making decisions for us? (2020).

Made in Europe: Concept and Critique of the Role of Europe as a Global Internet Standard-Setter in Light of the GDPR (and the Network Enforcement Act)

Kettemann/Wittner, Made in Europe: Concept and Critique of the Role of Europe as a Global Internet Standard-Setter in Light of the GDPR  (and the Network Enforcement Act), ZaöRV (2020)

Misguided ‘solution’ to terrorist content will have bad consequences for our rights

Pirkova/Simon, Misguided ‘solution’ to terrorist content will have bad consequences for our rights (Euractiv, 2020).

Facebook’s Norm-Making System: Results of a Pilot Study

Facebook’s Norm-Making System: Results of a Pilot Study (Hamburg: Working Papers of the Hans-Bredow-Institut, Works in Progress # 1, 2020).

Abstract:

This paper presents the outcome of a pilot study into the private order of communication developed by a major social network provider, Facebook Inc., and its policy development process. It is part of a broader research focus on the evolution and application, the legitimacy and contestation of norms in private online communication spaces and their public impact, both in terms of individual rights and societal cohesion. With first-of-a-kind access to the internal processes of policy development (norm production), researchers were able to study the development of content-related policies through phases of participant observation, expert interviews, and normative analyses. The first insights developed in this case study already make an important contribution to the understanding of the challenges posed by creating private rules for what are essentially global digital communication spheres, the interactions between rule-making processes within and outside Facebook, Inc., as a popular social media company that sets rules for 2.7 billion users, and the (self)-conception (and production) of legitimacy in norm-development through proceduralization and external stakeholder involvement. Facebook, we find in this case study, is developing its own normative order; its norms (community standards) are closely intertwined with its platform. It is the Product Policy team that is involved in developing norms. This is no accident. National legal systems need to be more intricately connected to the diversified (and still diversifying) order(s) of private communication.

Who should decide what we see online?

Pirkova/Simon, Who should decide what we see online? (2020).

Navigating Normative Orders. Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Kettemann (ed.), Navigating Normative Orders. Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, May 2020).

The Normative Order of the Internet. A Theory of Online Rule and Regulation

Kettemann, The Normative Order of the Internet. A Theory of Online Rule and Regulation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2020).

Freedom of Expression on the Internet

Benedek/Kettemann, Freedom of Expression on the Internet (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2014, 2nd ed. 2020, translations into French, Turkish, Ukrainian).

[How] Can Pluralist Approaches to Computational Cognitive Modeling of Human Needs and Values Save our Democracies?

Human, Soheil and Neumann, Gustaf and Peschl, Markus F. (2019) [How] Can Pluralist Approaches to Computational Cognitive Modeling of Human Needs and Values Save our Democracies? Intellectica (70). pp. 165-180. ISSN 0769-4113.

A decade of Semantic Web research through the lenses of a mixed methods approach

Sabrina Kirrane, Marta Sabou, Javier D. Fernández, Francesco Osborne, Cécile Robin, Paul Buitelaar, Enrico Motta, and Axel Polleres, A decade of Semantic Web research through the lenses of a mixed methods approach, The Semantic Web Journal, accepted in 2019 (to appear)

Die Weltordnung des Digitalen

Kettemann, Die Weltordnung des Digitalen, Vereinte Nationen. Zeitschrift für die Vereinten Nationen und ihre Sonderorganisationen/German Review on the United Nations 5/2019, 195-200.

Consent Comprehension Made Easy Demo

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, Consent Comprehension Made Easy Demo, Open Day for Privacy, Usability, and Transparency (PUT 2019) co-located with the 19th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium

Knowledge graphs: New directions for knowledge representation on the semantic web (dagstuhl seminar 18371)

Bonatti, P. A., Decker, S., Polleres, A., & Presutti, V. (2019). Knowledge graphs: New directions for knowledge representation on the semantic web (dagstuhl seminar 18371). In Dagstuhl reports (Vol. 8, No. 9). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik.

Abstract:

The increasingly pervasive nature of the Web, expanding to devices and things in everyday life, along with new trends in Artificial Intelligence call for new paradigms and a new look on Knowledge Representation and Processing at scale for the Semantic Web. The emerging, but still to be concretely shaped concept of” Knowledge Graphs” provides an excellent unifying metaphor for this current status of Semantic Web research. More than two decades of Semantic Web research provides a solid basis and a promising technology and standards stack to interlink data, ontologies and knowledge on the Web. However, neither are applications for Knowledge Graphs as such limited to Linked Open Data, nor are instantiations of Knowledge Graphs in enterprises-while often inspired by-limited to the core Semantic Web stack. This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 18371″ Knowledge Graphs: New Directions for Knowledge Representation on the Semantic Web”, where a group of experts from academia and industry discussed fundamental questions around these topics for a week in early September 2018, including the following: what are knowledge graphs? Which applications do we see to emerge? Which open research questions still need be addressed and which technology gaps still need to be closed?

Follow-up to the Comparative Study on Blocking Filtering and Take-down of Illegal Internet Content

Kettemann, Follow-up to the Comparative Study on Blocking Filtering and Take-down of Illegal Internet Content (Country Report for Germany 2016-2019) (Strassburg: Europarat, 2019), https://rm.coe.int/dgi-2019-update-chapter-germany-study-on-blocking-and-filtering/168097ac51.

Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation

Olha Drozd and Sabrina Kirrane, I Agree: Customize your Personal Data Processing with the CoRe User Interface, Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business (TrustBus 2019)

Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation

Kleinwächter/Kettemann/Senges (Hrsg.), Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation. An Agenda for the 2020s (Berlin: BMWi, Nov. 2019) (online OA at https://leibniz-hbi.de/de/publikationen/towards-a-global-framework-for-cyber-peace-and-digital-cooperation)

Information & Disinformation

Kettemann, Good news, bad news, fake news, real news. The importance of trust in the age of information, disinformation and misinformation,in Missions Publiques, Briefing materials for International Citizens’ Debates – „We, the Internet“, Paris/Berlin (October 2019), https://intgovwiki.org/w/index.php/Information_and_Disinformation.

No summer break for free expression in Europe: Facebook cases that matter for human rights

Pirkova, No summer break for free expression in Europe: Facebook cases that matter for human rights (2019)

International Rules for Social Media
Safeguarding human rights, combating disinformation

Kettemann, International Rules for Social Media. Safeguarding human rights, combating disinformation, Global Governance Spotlight 2/2019 (Development and Peace Foundation (sef:), Bonn, 2019), https://www.sef-bonn.org/en/publications/global-governance-spotlight/22019.html.

Abstract:

With only a few weeks left before the elections to the European Parliament, there is widespread concern about the impact of online disinformation campaigns and hate speech. Various initiatives at the European and global level seek to curb the distribution of false and defamatory information through the establishment of new normative and regulative frameworks. In this paper, Matthias C. Kettemann looks at the strengths and weaknesses of these initiatives from an international law perspective. In his conclusion, he proposes five guidelines for combating disinformation without compromising on human rights.

Many Worlds, Many Nets, Many Visions

Mosene/Kettemann (eds.), Many Worlds. Many Nets. Many Visions. Critical Voices, Visions and Vectors for Internet Governance (Berlin: HIIG, 2019) (https://www.hiig.de/publication/many-worlds-many-nets-many-visions)

Abstract:

The Internet is a place of contrasts. Consider this: In 1996 John Perry Barlow wrote in his Declaration on the Independence of Cyberspace that “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” A world that all can enter on an equal footing? Can this be true? Has such a world emerged? A world where discrimination has no place, where freedom of expression reigns, where fear has no place? How can these beautiful words be made to fit the lived experience of so many all across the world?

Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology

Wagner/Kettemann/Vieth (eds.), Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology. Global Politics, Law and International Relations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019).

More information:

In a digitally connected world, the question of how to respect, protect and implement human rights has become unavoidable. This contemporary Research Handbook offers new insights into well-established debates by framing them in terms of human rights. It examines the issues posed by the management of key Internet resources, the governance of its architecture, the role of different stakeholders, the legitimacy of rule making and rule-enforcement, and the exercise of international public authority over users. Highly interdisciplinary, its contributions draw on law, political science, international relations and even computer science and science and technology studies.

Human Rights, Digital Society and the Law

Kettemann/Benedek, Freedom of expression online, in Mart Susi (Hrsg.), Human Rights, Digital Society and the Law. A Research Companion (London: Routledge, 2019), 58-74.

‌Book Description:

The Internet has created a formidable challenge for human rights law and practice worldwide. International scholarly and policy-oriented communities have so far established a consensus regarding only one main aspect – human rights in the internet are the same as offline. There are emerging and ongoing debates regarding not only the standards and methods to be used for achieving the “sameness” of rights online, but also whether “classical” human rights as we know them are contested by the online environment. The internet itself, in view of its cross-border nature and its ability to affect various areas of law, requires adopting an internationally oriented approach and a perspective strongly focused on social sciences. In particular, the rise of the internet, enhanced also by the influence of new technologies such as algorithms and intelligent artificial systems, has influenced individuals’ civil, political and social rights not only in the digital world, but also in the atomic realm. As the coming of the internet calls into question well-established legal categories, a broader perspective than the domestic one is necessary to investigate this phenomenon.

This book explores the main fundamental issues and practical dimensions related to the safeguarding of human rights in the internet, which are at the focus of current academic debates. It provides a comprehensive analysis with a forward-looking perspective of bringing order into the somewhat chaotic online dimension of human rights. It addresses the matter of private digital censorship, the apparent inefficiency of existing judicial systems to react to human rights violations online, the uncertainty of liability for online human rights violations, whether the concern with personal data protection overshadows multiple other human rights issues online and will be of value to those interested in human rights law and legal regulation of the internet.

Busted! The Truth About the 50 Most Common Internet Myths

Kettemann/Dreyer (Hrsg.), Busted! The Truth About the 50 Most Common Internet Myths (Berlin: BMWi/Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut, Nov. 2019) (online OA at https://www.internetmyths.eu).

‌Book Description:

This anthology clears up misconceptions about the Internet and summarises what we really know about the online world. The editors Matthias C. Kettemann and Stephan Dreyer have embarked on a search for the 50 most common Internet myths and asked Internet experts from Africa, America, Asia and Europe to disprove these myths in a concise form.

Back up: Can Users Sue Platforms to Reinstate Deleted Content?

Kettemann/Tiedeke, Back up: Can Users Sue Platforms to Reinstate Deleted Content?  A Comparative Study of US and German Jurisprudence on “Must Carry”, GigaNet Symposion Research Paper (2019).

‌Abstract:

A private order of public communication has emerged. As social network services fulfill important communicative functions in political communication processes, the question of public interest and public law-based limits to their private power has to be carefully considered. A lot has been written about the failings of companies in deleting problematic content. This paper flips the question and asks under which conditions users can sue to reinstate content and under which circumstances courts have recognized ‘must carry’ obligations for social network services. We will analyze this question looking at a selection of US and German court cases on the question of reinstatement of accounts and republication of deleted posts, videos and tweets. We will draw out the differences in constitutional and statutory law and explain the divergence. Our analysis will also point to a larger issue of systemic relevance, namely the differences in treatment of states and private companies as threats to and/or guarantors of fundamental rights in the jurisdictions under comparison. Finally, we will show why it is important to not think about private ordering of communication as separate (or even separable) from the public interest.

“This is Not a Drill”: International Law and Protection of Cybersecurity

Kettemann, “This is Not a Drill”: International Law and Protection of Cybersecurity, in Wagner/Kettemann/Vieth (eds.), Research Handbook of Human Rights and Digital Technology (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019), 113-128.

Intelligent Agents: The Vision Revisited

Sabrina Kirrane and Stefan Decker, Intelligent Agents: The Vision Revisited, Workshop on Decentralizing the Semantic Web (DeSemWeb2018) @ The 17th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2018)

Enabling Personal Data Processing Control via Dynamic Consent

Olha Drozd, Rigo Wenning and Sabrina Kirrane, Enabling Personal Data Processing Control via Dynamic Consent, Open Day for Privacy, Transparency and Decentralization (OPERANDI 2018) @ PETS2018

A Scalable Consent, Transparency and Compliance Architecture

Sabrina Kirrane, Javier D. Fernández, Wouter Dullaert, Uros Milosevic, Axel Polleres, Piero Bonatti, Rigo Wenning, Olha Drozd and Philip Raschke, A Scalable Consent, Transparency and Compliance Architecture, Proceedings of the Posters and Demos Track of the Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2018)

Privacy, security and policies: A review of problems and solutions with semantic web technologies

Sabrina Kirrane, Serena Villata, and Mathieu d’Aquin, Privacy, security and policies: A review of problems and solutions with semantic web technologies, The Semantic Web Journal, 2018

Supporting Pluralism by Artificial Intelligence: Conceptualizing Epistemic Disagreements as Digital Artifacts

Human, S., Bidabadi, G., & Savenkov, V. (2018). Supporting pluralism by artificial intelligence: Conceptualizing epistemic disagreements as digital artifacts. In Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2017 (pp. 190-193). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

A crucial concept in philosophy and social sciences, epistemic disagreement, has not yet been adequately reflected in the Web. In this paper, we call for development of intelligent tools dealing with epistemic disagreements on the Web to support pluralism. As a first step, we present POLYPHONY, an ontology for representing and annotating epistemic disagreements.

Legislative compliance assessment: framework, model and GDPR instantiation

Agarwal, S., Steyskal, S., Antunovic, F., & Kirrane, S. (2018). Legislative compliance assessment: framework, model and GDPR instantiation. In Privacy Technologies and Policy: 6th Annual Privacy Forum, APF 2018, Barcelona, Spain, June 13-14, 2018, Revised Selected Papers 6 (pp. 131-149). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

Legislative compliance assessment tools are commonly used by companies to help them to understand their legal obligations. One of the primary limitations of existing tools is that they tend to consider each regulation in isolation. In this paper, we propose a flexible and modular compliance assessment framework that can support multiple legislations. Additionally, we describe our extension of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) so that it can be used not only to represent digital rights but also legislative obligations, and discuss how the proposed model is used to develop a flexible compliance system, where changes to the obligations are automatically reflected in the compliance assessment tool. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach through the development of a General Data Protection Regulatory model and compliance assessment tool.

Designing a GDPR-compliant and Usable Privacy Dashboard

Raschke, P., Küpper, A., Drozd, O., & Kirrane, S. (2018). Designing a GDPR-compliant and usable privacy dashboard. Privacy and Identity Management. The Smart Revolution: 12th IFIP WG 9.2, 9.5, 9.6/11.7, 11.6/SIG 9.2. 2 International Summer School, Ispra, Italy, September 4-8, 2017, Revised Selected Papers 12, 221-236.

‌Abstract:

The role of personal data gained significance across all business domains in past decades. Despite strict legal restrictions that processing personal data is subject to, users tend to respond to the extensive collection of data by service providers with distrust. Legal battles between data subjects and processors emphasized the need of adaptations by the current law to face today’s challenges. The European Union has taken action by introducing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was adopted in April 2016 and will inure in May 2018. The GDPR extends existing data privacy rights of EU citizens and simultaneously puts pressure on controllers and processors by defining high penalties in case of non-compliance. Uncertainties remain to which extent controllers and processors need to adjust their existing technologies in order to conform to the new law. This work designs, implements, and evaluates a privacy dashboard for data subjects intending to enable and ease the execution of data privacy rights granted by the GDPR.

Ontology for Representing Human Needs

Human, S., Fahrenbach, F., Kragulj, F., & Savenkov, V. (2017). Ontology for representing human needs. In Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web: 8th International Conference, KESW 2017, Szczecin, Poland, November 8-10, 2017, Proceedings 8 (pp. 195-210). Springer International Publishing.

‌Abstract:

Need satisfaction plays a fundamental role in human well-being. Hence understanding citizens’ needs is crucial for developing a successful social and economic policy. This notwithstanding, the concept of need has not yet found its place in information systems and online tools. Furthermore, assessing needs itself remains a labor-intensive, mostly offline activity, where only a limited support by computational tools is available. In this paper, we make the first step towards employing need management in the design of information systems supporting participation and participatory innovation by proposing OpeNeeD, a family of ontologies for representing human needs data. As a proof of concept, OpeNeeD has been used to represent, enrich and query the results of a needs assessment study in a local citizen community in one of the Vienna districts. The proposed ontology will facilitate such studies and enable the representation of citizens’ needs as Linked Data, fostering its co-creation and incentivizing the use of Open Data and services based on it.