Conference e_valuate! Scope for Design & Value Conflicts in Sociodigital Evaluation Infrastructures

Anyone who moves within the infrastructures of digital society is called upon in a variety of ways to make evaluations and value judgments and is also subject to evaluation themselves. In doing so, users move in environments that are themselves designed according to certain value standards and, through data-based action, permanently generate economically exploitable data that can be converted into information and contribute to the functioning of data-economic value creation. The design of digital social infrastructures and their research is fundamentally experimental and therefore dynamic in nature. The variants in which the category of value appears in the context of socio-digital infrastructures - as evaluation and being evaluated, as infrastructural inscription of values, as value creation and as a test of value - can be distinguished analytically. Empirically, however, they mostly occur in a complex form. This raises the overarching research question of how the aforementioned value variants interact or work against each other in sociodigital infrastructures. And the growing curating power of digital platforms not only raises the question of the value conflicts that are articulated in different valuation practices, infrastructures or between data worlds, but also the political question of the scope for designing valuation infrastructures for the common good in all four of the above-mentioned valuation dimensions. The conference aims to explore these questions in all of the aforementioned valuation dimensions.

Keynote speakers:

* Nicole Zillien, Head of the Chair of Media Sociology, Institute of Sociology, Justus Liebig University Giessen.
* Jan-Hendrik Passoth, Professor for Sociology of Technology, Chair for Sociology of Technology, European New School of Digital Studies, Slubice, Poland / Frankfurt/Oder.
* Ulrich Dolata, Head of the Chair of Sociology VI, Department of Organizational and Innovation Sociology, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Stuttgart.
* Marcus Burkhardt, Academic Advisor in the Media Studies Department, Deputy Professor of "Digital Media and Methods", University of Siegen.
* Tatjana Seitz, Research Associate, SFB 1187 'Media of Cooperation', University of Siegen.

The conference is organized by the "Wissenschaftliches Zentrum für Informationstechnik-Gestaltung" (ITeG), University of Kassel, in cooperation with the DGS section "Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung" (WuT) and the DFG network "Auf dem Weg in die Bewertungsgesellschaft?".

More information about the conference on the website: https://www.uni-kassel.de/forschung/iteg/veranstaltungen/e-valuate