On Friday, December 6, 2024, the DIID winter retreat took place at the Haus der Universität in Düsseldorf. Around 30 members and guests came together on St. Nicholas Day to discuss current developments and projects and collect ideas for the future development of the DIID.
At the beginning, DIID spokesperson Prof. Dr. Marc Ziegele and DIID coordinator Dr. Dennis Frieß reported on the institute's past activities. In addition to welcoming new members Karin Weller and Justus Vasel, two successfully acquired projects in particular gave cause for celebration. We would like to congratulate Dr. Fabian Anicker on his successful DFG application “Large Language Models as communicative actors”. We are also delighted that the MeMo:KI-Monitor is entering its third round and that Prof. Dr. Frank Marcinkowski, Dr. Fabian Anicker, Florian Flaßhof and Birte Keller were able to acquire funding from the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.
The first speaker in the programme was Prof. Dr. Fernand Hörner from the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, who gave a talk in which he introduced the Centre for Digitalization and Digitality, himself and his research. The project dealt with the logic of differentiation and the dynamics of (political) subcultures in online environments based on a qualitative content analysis of YouTube comments. In future, DIID and ZDD want to work more closely together and make better use of the synergies between their existing expertise. Prof. Dr. Heiko Beyer (HHU) then gave a lecture on “The Revelations of Q: How and Why the QAnon Conspiracy Theory Conquered American Evangelicalism”, in which the integration of the QAnon conspiracy as an Internet phenomenon into the American public was empirically analyzed.
In the second block, Anna-Maria Linstaedt and Dennis Frieß reported on the project “Forum against Fakes - Together for a Strong Democracy” - a project of the Bertelsmann Stiftung in cooperation with the BMI, the Mercator Foundation and the Michael Otto Foundation for Sustainability. The project combined broad-based online participation with the input of a citizens' council put together especially for the project. As part of the make.org project, the DIID provided support in analyzing online participation. The presentation primarily informed the members about the data and analyses generated in the project in order to discuss ideas for further research and involve the members in the process. You can find out more about the project here.
Till Fahnenstich then presented a workshop concept together with Dennis Frieß, which is intended to guide pupils to critically reflect on ethical issues in the context of AI. This concept is to be tested with Düsseldorf schools next spring and will strengthen the transfer of scientific knowledge to society, which is important for the DIID. The presentation also invited the participants to a constructive discussion of the preliminary concept, which will be incorporated into the further development of the workshop.
In the afternoon, things got creative once again. More than eight years after the DIID was founded, the aim of a co-creative workshop was to think together about what the DIID is and should be in the future. The focus was particularly on the needs of the members. The participants worked in groups to develop their specific wishes for a future DIID profile and exchanged ideas on how to implement them. The workshop marked the start of a series of formats that will focus on the further development of the DIID in the coming year.
We would like to thank all speakers and participants for the inspiring day and are already looking forward to further exchanges and the summer retreat on June 27, 2025.