News

Monday, February 13th, 2023: Today, Katharina Baum, has successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Potsdam. Her dissertation is titled “Social Networking Sites: Implications for Individual Well-Being and Society” and was supervised by Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova from the University of Potsdam and Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society.

Congratulations, dear Dr. Katharina Baum!

Wednesday, November 9th, 2022: Hannes-Vincent Krause has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Potsdam. The dissertation is titled “Social Networking Site Use and Well-Being – A Nuanced Understanding of a Complex Relationship” and was supervised by Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova from the University of Potsdam and Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society.

Our team is pleased to congratulate Dr. Hannes-Vincent Krause on finishing his PhD journey and wishes him all the best for his future career.

Monday, June 21th, 2021. Katharina Baum and Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova, in collaboration with Dr. Stefan Meissner of the Norwegian School of Economics conducted a study on the role of partisan self-interest in the support for regulation of online targeted political advertising in the United States. With this kind of advertising, political parties target messages to voters based on personal data on platforms such as Facebook. The researchers find that supporters of both the Republican and Democratic parties believe that voters of the opposing party are more easily influenced by such advertising. “This implies that voters of both parties think the other party benefits more from online targeted political advertising, as they assume the opposing party can more easily persuade their supporters to vote for them”, Katharina Baum explains. The results further show that this belief is causally related to the support for the regulation of online targeted political advertising. When being informed that online targeted political advertising has benefited Republicans, but not Democrats, in the past, Republicans then report lower levels of support for regulation. The authors conclude that calls for stricter regulation of online targeted political advertisement also depend on how people think about the effect of online targeted political advertising on others. The study, "Partisan self-interest is an important driver for people's support for the regulation of targeted political advertising," by Katharina Baum, Stefan Meissner, and Hanna Krasnova, was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Thursday, June 3rd, 2021. Today, our chair member Safa’a AbuJarour defended her dissertations to earn her doctoral degree.  Her thesis titled “Digital Inclusion: The Role of Information and Communication Technology in Alleviating Social Disruptions“ was supervised by  Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova and examined by internal (Prof. Dr. Eric Kearney and Prof. Dr. Julia Fleischer) and external (Prof. Dr. Jane Fedorowicz from Bentley University, USA, and Prof. Dr. Steve Sawyer from Syracuse University, USA) experts. Due to the current Corona situation, the defense took place online via Zoom. Nevertheless, we believe the support and digital presence of family, friends, and colleagues enabled through ICT made the end of this Ph.D. journey enjoyable and memorable. 

Dear Dr. Safa’a AbuJarour, congratulations! We wish you all the best for your future endeavors and that you achieve the desired carrier goals!

Friday, March 6th, 2020. The chair of Social Media and Data Science, Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova is co-chairing chairing the 15th International Business Informatics Congress (WI 2020) to be held at the University of Potsdam, Germany. 
The current developments, opportunities and challenges of digitalization will be presented and discussed at the annual conference of business informatics from 9-11th March 2020 in Potsdam.
For more information about the conference, please visit: https://wi2020.de/en/. 
You can also follow the news of the conference on Twitter @WI2020DE
 

Tuesday, January 31, 2017: Today, in the context of their upcoming Integrationskongress 2017, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung carried out an exciting live interview on the topic “Integration 4.0”. We are so proud to tell you that they invited our very own research associate Safa’a AbuJarour to participate and to share her insights from her research about the link between the use of Smartphones and Social Networks by refugees and integration!

Talking about integration and technology, the foundation choose a very interesting interactive format: in this live interview, carried out by the online platform Sagwas.net (“sag was” meaning “say something”), the audience following the live stream broadcast was invited to comment and ask questions using an online chat. We’re intrigued with this use of technology to facilitate virtual opinion formation and exchange, especially on a topic dear to us such as its benefits for integration, and it’s our pleasure to tell you that quite a lot of users seized this great opportunity!

The entire live interview with Safa’a AbuJarour, in addition to Tobias Stapf from Minor’s project “New in Berlin”, will be available soon on their website.

For more information (in German), please visit http://www.sagwas.net/2017/02/integration-4-0-eine-frage-des-richtigen-klicks/

For watching the recording of the interview, please visit: http://www.sagwas.net/live/integrationskongress-iiii-mit-dem-smartphone-nach-europa/

Monday, December 12, 2016: We are proud to announce that our research associate Safa’a AbuJarour, in cooperation with Prof. Hanna Krasnova and Dr. Helena Weinninger, presented a manuscript for a panel session called “Leveraging Technology for Refugee Integration: How Can We Help?” that got accepted to the International Conference on Information Systems 2016. As ICIS is the most prestigious gathering of IS professionals and provides a forum for networking and sharing of latest ideas and highest caliber scientific work amongst the discipline, you can imagine that we were pretty excited about this opportunity!

In December 2016, our chair members travelled all the way to Dublin, Ireland, to meet up with an amazing panel filled with distinguished experts from all around the world: Jane Fedorowicz, from Bentley University, Sebastian Olbrich, from European Business School, Chee-Wee Tan, from Copenhagen Business School, Cathy Urquhart, from Manchester Metropolitan University, and Viswanath Venkatesh, from University of Arkansas.

Together, they discussed how to help the refugees get integrated in the new societies with the help of technology. This turned out to be a great chance for our panelists, and also the audience, to share their very interesting insights.

Thanks for following us!

For more details about the conference, please visit: http://icis2016.aisnet.org/

Friday, September 23, 2016: Proudly we would like to announce that our new manuscript for a panel session has been submitted and accepted to ICIS 2016 in Dublin, Ireland. The manuscript, which has been prepared by our chair members Safa’a AbuJarour and Hanna Krasnova in cooperation with Helana Weinninger has the title:

"Leveraging Technology for Refugee Integration: How Can We Help?"

The goal of this panel is to initiate discourse and deliberation by experts on how the knowledge accumulated by the IS community can be leveraged to design targeted technological solutions to tackle the refugees’ crisis that has gripped the European Region and avoid the potential risks associated with it.

We are looking forward to our panel session at ICIS 2016 in Dublin, and we will keep you updated about our future achievements.

For more details about the conference, please visit: http://icis2016.aisnet.org/

Monday, September 26, 2016: The manuscript entitled "Anonymity in Bitcoin – The Users’ Perspective" has been accepted for publication in the proceedings of International Conference on Information Systems.

Reference: Fabian, B., Ermakova, T., Sander, U. (2016). Anonymity in Bitcoin – The Users’ Perspective. International Conference on Information Systems.”

Monday, September 19, 2016: Spurred by the war in Syria, continuing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, refugee crisis has swept the European Region. Over 1.3 million asylum applications have been submitted across countries of the European Union, with Germany attracting the highest number of asylum seekers. These developments pose significant challenges. With local population caught by surprise and unfamiliar with the social norms and cultural practices of the incoming refugees, there is a pressing need to bring both parties together by enhancing intercultural awareness.



As part of the brand-new course “Online Social Media Marketing” offered by Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova, our students were given the opportunity to design a real social media campaign for this highly pressing cause. Supervised by our research associate Safa’a AbuJarour, a group of three students - Farina Hoffmeier, Lena Jung, Marianna Merseburger - have done an amazing job!



Their campaign aimed at promoting a positive image of refugees in Germany and changing public perceptions associated with the term “refugee”. This is how the three girls described the intention behind their project: "The word refugee is often associated with negative perceptions in our society. People often think only of problems, violence, death, integration challenges. They often forget about the real people, their personalities and the unique ways they can contribute to our evolving culture. We would like to open the curtain. We would like to give local population a chance to see and experience who the refugees are, their interests, dreams and ambitions. The more we know about each other, the easier the integration process is going to get! We are so enthusiastic about the impact our work might have”!

Based on the interviews with seven refugees in Berlin and Brandenburg Farina Hoffmeier, Lena Jung, Marianna Merseburger have been able to get more insights into the daily lives of refugees in Germany, their hopes and their aspirations. Their conclusion: "Refugees - They are just like us! Just awesome! We laugh about the same things and we do the same things in our free time. It should be easier to find a way to do it together!"

Interested to know more? Just read the shared stories on our blog

Monday, September 12, 2016: The manuscript entitled "Improving Individual Acceptance of Health Clouds through Confidentiality Assurance" has been accepted for publication in the Applied Clinical Informatics Journal.
 
Reference: Ermakova, T., Fabian, B., Zarnekow, R. (2016) “Improving Individual Acceptance of Health Clouds through Confidentiality Assurance,” Applied Clinical Informatics Journal.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016: In this semester's Data Science class we organized a competition among the student's projects, which had to be defended in front of independent experts. The best projects were awarded with certificates. The task was to apply the skills and tools provided in class to interesting fields, preparing an insightful presentation of knowledge extracted with the use of R. The students extracted raw data and processed it with only the use of R software. In the end, we gained quite interesting insights!

We had presenations on the following topics:

Saturday, July 9, 2016: As part of our research interest, our team member Safa’a AbuJarour, who is a co-founder of the initiative Place4Refugees, in cooperation with our students in the course Online and Social Media Marketing, who initiated the project “Who are the Refugees”, have co-organized an event for the refugees to celebrate the end of Ramadan feast in Berlin.

The main goal of this celebration is to share the refugees in their celebration of one of the most important occasions for them. We celebrated this event in a social gathering, in which they could feel home and reduce their homesickness. Additionally, it was an excellent occasion to gather locals with the newcomers to support the integration process between both sides.

To sponsor this event, our team member and students initiated a crowdfunding project to engage all interested parties to make the success of this event.

https://www.betterplace.org/de/projects/45813-spendet-fur-sussigkeiten-kinderspielzeug-fur-fluchtlinge-zum-zuckerfest

Moreover, this event attracted significant media attention, where our team member Safa’a AbuJarour was interviewed to talk about this project. The interview on RBB Info-Radio can be found here.

The event was successful from the refugees and the locals’ point of views. We distributed gifts for kids and oriental sweets for everyone. Several social games were also organized for the kids and social discussions took place for adults. By the end of the event, we were able to make our gusts happy and to make ourselves proud of the successful event.

Thanks to everyone who supported us making this event such a successful one!

Tuesday, June 21, 2016: Our chair would like to congratulate our team member Helena Wenninger for successfully defending her PhD thesis about the influence of social networking sites (SNS) on their members at the University of Darmstadt. We are proud of her achievement, and wish her the best for her future professional as well as personal life.
In her dissertation, Helena focused on the differentiation of various usage patterns and social mechanisms taking place on these digital platforms. A diary study with teens suggests that directed communication features like private messages or the “like”-button to increase belongingness with others. On the other hand, social comparison processes following the consumption of social information on SNSs have been linked to detrimental outcomes like envy feelings. Overall, results show the importance of distinguishing usage behaviors due their potential to explain controversial outcomes of SNSs usage.

Friday, June 10, 2016: Our chair was honored to welcome one of the most influential researchers in the field of IS in the period of 2nd of June to 10th of June 2016.

http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Faculty/People/Faculty_Members/Benbasat_Izak

Bio of Izak Benbasat

Izak Benbasat, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Professor and CANADA Research Chair in Information Technology Management
Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Canada 

Professor Benbasat was ranked as the most influential MIS researcher in terms of publications cited by others (Lowry et al, Communications of the Association for Information Systems Volume 20, 2007), and as the most prolific author in terms Human-Computer Interaction research in MIS during 1990-2008 (Zhang, P., et al. 2009 AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, (1:3)). For the years 2000-2010, as well as 1990-2010, he is the author with the highest number of publications both in Information Systems Research and in the MIS Quarterly (see http://vvenkatesh.com/isranking/), the two best journals in information systems.

Professor Benbasat is currently on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Information Systems and Information Systems Journal. He was editor-in-chief of Information Systems Research, the Editor of the Information Systems & Decision Support Systems Department of Management Science and a Senior Editor of the MIS Quarterly.

Professor Benbasat received INFORMS Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow Award in 2009. He was given the LEO Award for Lifetime Exceptional Achievements in Information Systems from the Association for Information Systems (AIS) in 2007 and became a Fellow of AIS in 2002. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada in 2005.  He was appointed CANADA Research Chair in Information Technology Management in 2001, and reappointed in 2008 for a seven-year term. He received the University of British Columbia Killam Research Prize in 1998 and the University of British Columbia Killam Teaching Prize in 1996. He was CANFOR Professor of Management Information Systems from 1991 to 2001. He was invited to spend the 1985-6 academic year at the Harvard Business School as a Marvin Bower Fellow, and was Shaw Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore in 2000.

His current research interests in IT utilization include:

1) investigating the methods for customer service provision on the Internet (business-to-consumer, business-to-business, and citizen-to-government)

2) evaluating product recommendation agents used in electronic commerce, including those for social shopping networks, and

3) designing tools to help reduce risk and deception in electronic commerce. This work is supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the University of British Columbia Hampton Grants.

Sunday, June 12 - Wednesday, June 15 2016: The 24th European Conference of Information Systems (http://www.ecis2016.eu/en/) – one of the major events in the Information Systems field - took place in Istanbul. The Chair of Wirtschaftsinformatik, insb. datenintensive Anwendungen at University of Potsdam headed by Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova contributed to two tracks.
First, in the "Value-Based ICT Innovation and Design” track the study “Exploring the Impact of Readability of Privacy Policies on Users’ Trust” was presented by Safa'a AbuJarour.
Second, in the track “Social Media - The New Global Normal” the paper "Why Phubbing Is Toxic for Your Relationship: Understanding the Role of Smartphone Jealousy Among “Generation Y” Users" was presented by Helena Wenninger.
We are thankful to all conference participants for the active discussion of both papers and interesting comments which will be considered in the future research!
 
References:
Ermakova, T., Krasnova, H., Fabian, B. (2016). “Exploring the Impact of Readability of Privacy Policies on Users’ Trust”, Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (2016), Istanbul, Turkey. URL: www.ecis2016.eu/papers/1150.pdf
 
Krasnova, H., Abramova, O., Notter, I., Baumann, A. (2016) “Why Phubbing Is Toxic for Your Relationship: Understanding the Role of Smartphone Jealousy Among “Generation Y” Users”, Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (2016), Istanbul, Turkey. URL: www.ecis2016.eu/papers/2391.pdf

WHY PHUBBING IS TOXIC FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP: UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF SMARTPHONE JEALOUSY AMONG “GENERATIONY” USERS

Sunday, June 12, 2016: The 24th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Istanbul

-       Krasnova, Hanna, Universität Potsdam, Germany, krasnova@uni-potsdam.de

-       Abramova, Olga, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany, abramova@is.tu-darmstadt.de

-       Notter, Isabelle, Universität Bern, Switzerland, isabelle.notter@students.unibe.ch

-       Baumann, Annika, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, annika.baumann@wiwi.hu-berlin.de

Abstract: Coined as “phubbing”, excessive use of smartphones in the romantic context has been shown to represent a barrier to meaningful communication, causing conflict, lowering relationship satisfaction, and undermining individual well-being. While these findings project a dire picture of the future of romance, the mechanisms behind the detrimental influence of partner phubbing on relationship-relevant markers are still little understood. Considering prior evidence that partner phubbing leads to the loss of exclusive attention towards the other party, we argue that these are rather the feelings of jealousy partner phubbing is triggering that are responsible for the negative relational outcomes.

Based on the analysis of qualitative and quantitative responses from “generation Y” users, we find that partner phubbing is associated with heightened feelings of jealousy, which is inversely related to couple’s relational cohesion. Moreover, jealousy plays a mediating role in the relationship between partner’s smartphone use and relational cohesion, acting as a mechanism behind this undesirable link. Challenging the frequently promoted euphoria with regard to permanent “connectedness”, our study contributes to a growing body of IS research that addresses dark sides of information technology use and provides corresponding implications for IS practitioners.

Read the paper here:

http://www.ecis2016.eu/papers/2391.pdf

EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF READABILITY OF PRIVACY POLICIES ON USERS’ TRUST

Sunday, June 12, 2016: The 24th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Istanbul

-       Ermakova, Tatiana, University of Potsdam, Germany, tatiana.ermakova@uni-potsdam.de

-       Krasnova, Hanna, University of Potsdam, Germany, krasnova@uni-potsdam.de

-       Fabian, Benjamin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, bfabian@wiwi.hu-berlin.de

Abstract:

Empirical studies have repeatedly pointed out that the readability of a privacy policy is a potential source of trust of online users. Nevertheless, many online companies still keep the readability of their privacy policies at a low level. This could possibly coincide with a low compliance of their privacy policies with the guidelines of fair information practices and thus with users’ privacy expectations. Against this background, this study seeks to clarify the role of perceived and actual readability of user-friendly and -unfriendly privacy policies in shaping user’s trust in a mobile service provider. Tested for two different mobile service scenarios that differ in the sensitivity of user data (educational entertainment app vs. health app), our hypotheses are verified based on the responses of 539 online users. Our findings reveal that in the case of a user-unfriendly data-handling policy, the effect of actual readability of a privacy policy outweighs the effect of its perceived readability in forming users’ trust. At the same time, for a user-friendly privacy policy, only perceived readability plays a significant role in promoting users’ trust in the provider of an educational entertainment app. In a sensitive healthcare context, however, perceived and actual readability of privacy policies are almost equally important.

Read the paper here:http://www.ecis2016.eu/papers/1150.pdf

Tuesday, April 26, 2016: We are excited! Olga Abramova and Prof. Hanna Krasnova will present their joint work "Physician-Rating Platforms: How Does Your Doctor Feel?" at the 22nd Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2016) in San Diego! AMCIS is a major conference in the field of Information Systems!

Reference: Abramova, O., Veltri, N., Krasnova, H., Kiatprasert, S., Buxmann, P. (2016) "Physician-Rating Platforms: How Does Your Doctor Feel?", accepted to the 22nd Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2016), San Diego, U.S.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016: We have great news!  Prof. Hanna Krasnova and Olga Abramova will present their joint work " Why Phubbing Is Toxic for Your Relationship: Understanding the Role of Smartphone Jealousy Among “Generation Y” Users" at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2016) in Istanbul! ECIS is a major conference in the field of Information Systems in Europe! Stay tuned for more research to come!

Reference: Krasnova, H., Abramova, O., Notter, I., Baumann, A. (2016) “Why Phubbing Is Toxic for Your Relationship: Understanding the Role of Smartphone Jealousy Among “Generation Y” Users”, Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (2016), Istanbul, Turkey.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016: At this year's 24th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2016) the Chair of Social Media and Data Sciences will be represented with a scientific elaboration by Dr. Tatinana Ermakova and Prof. Hanna Krasnova on "Exploring the impact of readability of privacy policies on user's trust". The full paper is provided here.

Reference: Ermakova, T., Krasnova, H., Fabian, B. (2016) “Exploring the impact of readability of privacy policies on user's trust”, Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (2016), Istanbul, Turkey.

Monday, April 11, 2016: How do you respond to a negative review in the Sharing Economy? Olga Abramova and Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova discuss the role of three critical response strategies to negative reviews in the Sharing Economy in their new publication in the Swiss Journal of Business Research and Practice “Die Unternehmung” ( 70. Jg.,1/2016).

Recognizing the harmful effect of negative reviews on the reputation of the hosts as well as a subjective nature of the travel experience judgements, accommodation sharing platforms, like Airbnb, have introduced the response option, empowering hosts with the voice to deny, present an excuse, or at least apologize for the subject of the criticism. However, the effects of different response strategies on the impression of guests regarding the host and, above all, guests’ willingness to rent a specific accommodation in the sharing setting remain unclear. To fill this gap, this study focuses on understanding the impact of different response strategies utilizing experimental methods. Our investigation shows that when the subject of complaint is controllable by a host, only the “confession / apology” strategy can improve the impression of guests regarding the host and enhance guests’ willingness to rent, compared to the absence of response. However, when the subject of criticism is beyond the control of the host, both “confession / apology” and “excuse” have positive influence on the impression and also guests’ willingness to rent. At the same time, “denial” strategy appears ineffective in both controllable and uncontrollable contexts we tested.

The research paper as PDF can be downloaded here

Monday, April 11, 2016: The society is nowadays concerned about the refugees’ situation in Germany; therefore, Safa’a AbuJarour and Prof. Dr. Hanna Krasnova would like to bridge the gap between the society and the newcomers to help both sides gain the best out of the current situation, namely, turn the crisis into an opportunity. Safa’a has been achieving this goal in practice due to her understanding of both cultures and her involvement in the refugees’ situation since the start of the crisis in Berlin. Their plan now is to apply scientific research methods to this situation to come up with best practices and recommendation to optimize it, and to investigate how stress and social support affect the overall well-being of the refugees. 

Considering the novelty and unprecedented scale of the refugee crisis, there are little research insights on how the technology can be successfully used to alleviate human suffering, improve refugees’ chances for integration, and enhance acceptance of refugees by the hosting population. At the same time, during her engagement, Safa’a AbuJarour recognized the potential of Social Networks to bring the volunteers together to solve the problem of finding places for the refugees. Therefore, she created a Facebook group that has meanwhile around 4000 members. In the process, she realized that not only the volunteers use this group, but also the refugees themselves. Hence, she managed with the team of volunteers to extend their involvement and create a new website, Place4Refugees.de, that serves the needs of the volunteers and the refugees at the same time.

During the previous months, we have been gathering many insights about how the refugees use their smartphones and Social Networks to deal with the new situation in Germany. These learnings can be applied to increase the efficiency of online language classes for the refugees. Enhancing the user’s expedience of Open Education and adapting Open Educational approaches according to the cultural differences of the newcomers can have a considerable impact on their success and value. For instance, based on the culture of the refugees from Middle East, it is expected that social-oriented Open Educational classes will have a huge advantage over normal Open Educational classes.

 We will publish the initial results of our current research on our website soon … stay tuned.

Sunday, April 10, 2016: The Züricher SonntagsZeitung recently mentioned Professor Krasnovas research efforts in the field of smartphone usage by parents. Results are a called a wake up call ...

Smartphone-Gebrauch von Mutter und Vater kann gravierende Auswirkungen haben