In the last years the digitization process grew up really fast and many media especially the established media (e.g. print, movie, picture, Museum) had to change because new media (e.g. Internet, Video Games, Smart-Phones) displace the old ones.
Thus, the “old” media had to find a way how to “survive” or exist in relation to the new media. Joseph Schumpeter called this process where the “new”, destroys the “old” as Creative Destruction (“Schöpferische Zerstörung”).

In my work, I will especially talk about two established media, the print media, the television (including the cinema) and also a “new” one like the Video Games. First I will give an introduction about to the selected media and describe how these kinds of media have developed in the last years and how they will be developing in the future. Also, I will show chances and risks of the digitalization process for my selected kind of media and which strategy the different media use to protect their places on the market against other competitors or which they use to enter new markets. In the end, the following question should be answered, ‘Can this process of digitization of media are called as creative destruction in the sense of Schumpeter?’.

– Matthias Wilde

Arthur Verkerke

In a digitalizing world, all kind of healthcare services are adopting more and more information systems. In the youth health care, this process is also going on. The fact that (1) children are not (yet) capable of standing up for their own rights and that (2) the maturation of children can be seriously harmed when information about treatments is misused makes this a special case in comparison to the digitisation of ‘regular’ healthcare received by adults. Since the involved people are in this case mainly the doctors providing youth care and the children receiving it, the focus of the social-cultural impacts will be mainly on these groups. However, in order to provide useful insights, the implications for the designers of information systems related to youth e-health care will also shortly be mentioned.

Therefore this paper focusses on the social-cultural impacts of two aspects of e-health; (1) the impacts of the implementation of electronic patient records and (2) digitalisation of the administration in the youth care. After a small introduction to the main concepts, first the impacts for the health care providers (both the doctors and the organisation hiring them) will be discussed. Then, the impacts for children and their parents are explored. Finally, the consequences of the impacts for developers of electronic patient records and digital administration systems will be discussed. In the end, the main socio-cultural impacts will be summarized and recommendations will be formulated. The insights of this paper will hopefully help the youth care to digitise its patient records and  administration in a responsible way, while aware of the socio-cultural impact this might have.

Possible sources to use (besides given literature)

Abbott, P. A., Foster, J., Marin, H. F., & Dykes, P. C. (2013). Complexity and the science of implementation in health IT—Knowledge gaps and future visions. International journal of medical informatics.

Ludwick, D. A., & Doucette, J. (2009). Adopting electronic medical records in primary care: lessons learned from health information systems implementation experience in seven countries. International journal of medical informatics, 78(1), 22-31.

Nguyen, L., Bellucci, E., & Nguyen, L. T. (2014). Electronic Health Records Implementation: An Evaluation of Information System Impact and Contingency Factors. International journal of medical informatics.

Knowledge and information are key assets of every company. If they are managed the right way, a company’s efficiency and overall performance can be increased tremendously.

Within our digital environment cloud computing seems to be a perfect way to be used as the primary tool for the management of information and knowledge inside a company. Major benefits of cloud computing are that the cloud services can be accessed at any time and from any place with every network enabling device. This leads towards much more flexibility within workflows and can improve the time management of a company remarkably, ultimately leading to an increase of the company’s overall performance. Examples like the pharmaceutical company Pfizer show how much a company is able to benefit from this new technology. However, there are also many examples of companies, which were not able to imply the use of cloud services in beneficial ways. On the contrary, the use of cloud services led to a decrease within their overall performances.

Within this paper I will use the following structure: First I will explain briefly the importance of knowledge and information for companies. In my second part I will explain the differences of cloud services offered and will give an overview of its most beneficial advantages as well as its weaknesses. Afterwards I will discuss the implementation of cloud services within companies and analyse the factors that are responsible for its successful application, using case studies as well as leadership and employee motivational theories.

“But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.“

-Socrates, Phaedrus

The above quote is an admonishment on the potential dangers of the written word and while it not might be entirely justified in its fears the quote might still be more relevant in our digital environment. The claim that people will appear omniscient and generally know nothing certainly seems prophetic when viewed through the lens of our connected world. Socrates concern might be universally valid for any age it does present a problem of our information use through digital means and that is the potential for misinformation. If we do not know the meaning of everything we read how do we know that the thing we read is indeed true? To re-frame the question in our information society the problem becomes: when we look for information can we know that the information we found is correct and will we ask that question if our lack of information made us seek it in the first place?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential for misinformation through digital means and how they differ from traditional means and the how we might not always recognize that we have been misinformed. What will also be examined is when misinformation is more likely to occur than in other situations. Misinformation will be separated into two categories: purposeful and unintentional. The spreading of purposeful misinformation is always done for a reason whether it is for commercial purposes or for personal reasons. The unintentional spreading of misinformation happens when people assume the information they have is legitimate. The problem of digital misinformation is not just that we might receive it but we might also propagate it by sharing it with others.

However, even if the potential is bigger in a digital world to spread misinformation we should not assume that any information we find is automatically misinformation anymore than we should assume that any information we find is necessarily true. Even though there is huge potential for misinformation in our digital age there is also huge potential in our digital means for spreading correct information as well. Both sides will be examined in the paper.

Vilhelm Lönnberg

In this paper the reader should get an overview about the possibilities patients have to get involved in their medical state in our digitalized society. Nowadays patient charts are mostly digitalizes at some point.[1] That saves time to diagnose and treat patients correctly to their medical history.[2] But constructing portals for patients is a new field to explore. Portals and webpages individualized for certain patients start to be available on the market and is in use by hospitals.[3] Having access to their own medical condition no matter where they are, patients get the opportunity to empower their own situation in the health care system. The medical data is uploaded on these portals and can be used, stored and renewed all the time by each patient- from medication they need to previous taken X-rays. That promotes new possibilities, for patients and doctors.[4] There is no need any longer to acquire human resources to provide a certain information about a patient. Everything can be stored in one device. But is that the truth? There are critiques and high risks in digitalizing every patient’s information, thinking about security lacks in the digital data or incorrectly written medical conditions by the patient or the portal itself.[5] During that examination I analyze two different kinds of portals that advertise with helping patients to keep track with their own medical history and stay in contact with their hospitals or doctors. That for, the paper opens with a brief overview about digital health reporting and continues with presenting the progress from plain portals where appointments are made or access to certain information is available to portals containing every past and present medical condition of a patient. Then the cases will be explained.

[1] Sakar et al. (2010), p. 184.

[2] Ball MJ; Costin MY; Lehmann C. (2008), p. 2.

[3] e.g.: MyMedical source: http://mymedicalapp.com/ or Emory Healthcare Patient Portal, source: http://emoryhealthcare.org/patient-portal/index.html

[4] Emont, Seth (2011).

[5] Greenhalgh, Trisha et al. (2009).

Literature:

Ball MJ; Costin MY; Lehmann C: The personal health record: consumers banking on their health, Studies in Health Technology and Informatrics 2008, 134:35-4.

Emont, Seth: Measuring the Impact of Patient Portals: What the Literature Tells Us, In: California Healthcare Foundation, Online: http://www.chcf.org/~/media/MEDIA%20LIBRARY%20Files/PDF/M/PDF%20MeasuringImpactPatientPortals.pdf, May 2011., available: 27.09.2014, 13:34.

Greenhalgh, Trisha; Potts, Henry W. W.; Wong, Geoff; Bark, Pippa; Swinglehurst, Deborah: Tension and Paradox in electronic patient record, In: The Milbank Quartely, Vol. 87, Nr. 4, p. 729-788, 2009.

Sakar; Karter; Liu; Adler; Nguyen; Lopez; Schillinger: Health Literacy and the Use of an Internet Based Patient Portal in an integrated health system- results from a diabetis study of northern Carolina, In: Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives, Vol. 18, p. 183-196, 2010.

Nowadays politic in general is faced with two problematic tendencies of development. On the one hand there is an increasing disenchantment with politics and also a declining preparedness of citizens to get involved with policy making processes. A sure indicator for this trend is the low turnout at elections and the decreasing party memberships. On the other hand the public administration uses almost exclusively obsolete technologies to communicate with the citizens. Against the background of the age of the Internet and the desire of the people to coordinate their activities online, the government should not be closed to this new form of information and communication technologies (ICT).

“E-government” projects are a possible solution to remedy these tendencies, which can redesign the administrative processes between government and citizens with the help of ICT. A particular form of the e-government is the “e-participation”, which is a web-based method to allow the participation of the citizens in the policy making process and enables to encrust the structural top-down rigidities and creates finally a transparent and collaborative politic system.

This paper focuses on the question whether this electronic form of participation is adapted for the general public in the context of the Internet consumption and interest in politics. First of all we need a basic understanding of the “e-participation” including its forms and tools. After that, the potentials and risks of “e- participation” are discussed under the regard of the Internet consumption and interest in politics. To show an implementation of this concept, relevant “e-participation” initiatives of the European Union are analyzed to identify the challenges and make improvement suggestions.

Lisa Klug

Sharing Economy – a term often has been mentioned during the last decade. Its importance and rapid rise results from ongoing technological progress. Several ideas and visions were turned into business and people are able to share their private apartments, cars and even their food. All this is enabled and coordinated via Internet. In 2013, ‘Shareconomy’ has been the main theme of CeBIT, the world’s largest trade fair for information technology taking place in Germany. That emphasizes once again the impact of information management & technolgy within our society and economic system. Due to proceeding digitalization the boundaries between producers and consumers are becoming increasingly blurred.

What I would like to elaborate in this paper is the role of information management and digitalization with regard to sharing economy. The object is not an evaluation whether sharing economy is good or bad but rather its influence to our society and economic system in general.

The paper is organized in the following manner. A first step will be to define the terms ‘Sharing Economy’, ‘Information Management’ as well as ‘Digitalization’ to create a common understanding of what is being discussed in this paper. Second, the rapid rise of sharing economy that has been observed in recent years will be analyzed. In connection with this, I will put different examples where people are using this principle on record. Based on this, the significance and relation of digitalization and information management is being examined.

Finally, I comment on social and economical implications.

In Germany, we don’t use social media in schools and only partly at universities. But at the workplace it’s becoming more and more popular for everyone. Even in the international context it’s very common and useful. Choo et al. (2006) found that an information culture in companies increases its output and efficiency a lot, if the workers take part actively. But Hargittai et al. (2008) found that some young people aren’t able to keep pace with this digital development or not interested. They don’t take part in social media, don’t know how to use it and decrease their own chance to get a job. Therefore, it’s very important that every young person learn to make use of social media and to deal responsibly with it as well. In my opinion it’s a good idea to teach the application of social media in schools while integrating it into a lessons plan indirectly. I want to think about the use of social media in schools during the grades five to ten. As an example, I would like to think about the use of a Facebook group.

My text structure should be the following. First, I will write about the increasing importance of social media in the working and live context. I will outline the reasons, why every pupil should learn how to use social media. Then I will consider the advantages and disadvantages of social media while using the example of a Facebook group. Afterwards, I will discuss the requirements of implementing a Facebook group for a class and its teacher.

On the 17 of September 2014 the US streaming portal „Netflix“ startet its online service in Austria. Netflix is the leading streaming service worldwide „with more than 44 million streaming members in over 40 countries enjoying more than one billion hours of TV shows and movies per month“ (Netflix 2013: 1). Thereby one of the key strengths of Netflix is collecting big data. By that it uses a personalized algorithm, „which recommends other shows to watch based on what the user has seen“ (Nippes 2014: n.s.). Critical voices claim that through that the creative process of discovering and liking a series gets lost, because the algorithm offers the user programmes it thinks they will like (cf. Leonard 2013: n.s.). Keeping that in mind Netflix has a great power to promote series that are produced by themselves (for example „House of Cards“) or even other shows from other providers.
For this reason in this paper I will discuss how user information and big data is used to manipulate users watching suggestions and try to expose what it implies of the future of streaming portals. Therefore I will begin with a short description of streaming portals in general. Then I will continue with the concept of big data and it’s underlaying principles. After that I will briefly introduce the US streaming portal Netflix. Finally, I will talk about how Netflix manipulates users suggestions and how the possible future of streaming portals will look like.

References
Leonard, Andrew. 2013. „How Netflix is turning viewers into puppets“. http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/how_netflix_is_turning_viewers_into_puppets/ (accessed 26 September 2014).

Nippes, Daniel. 2014. „Netflix’s Big Data Architecture“. http://dataconomy.com/netflix-big-data-architecture/ (accessed 26 September 2014).

Netflix. 2013. „Netflix, Inc.“. http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/3504957457x0x748407/76a245dc-3314-401c-baba-ed229ca9145a/NFLX_AR.PDF (accessed 26 September 2014).

Ohlhorst, Frank. 2013. „Big data analytics: turning big data into money“. N.J.: Wiley, cop.

By Julia Pechmann

Comics have long been defined by the limitations set by the newspaper layout. However, comics are more and more published online. My research question is how much the digital environment has changed the form of comics or their layout and has there even developed a completely new genre vitally different to printed comics. The narrative can’t be overlooked but it’s not the main focus of this paper. I concentrate on web comics that are read directly online, in contrast to comics only distributed online.

An interesting feature is that web comics are read through one’s own screen and the actual comic may look very different on different devices. How does this affect the work and is it the same work? A web comic may not be available at all times as it’s not published in the traditional way. This leads to a rather philosophical question of how possibly temporary works of art should be treated. Web comics also usually provide the possibility of user interaction. Some comic artists even change the plot according to the readers’ feedback.

A starting point to explore the different views on web comics is McCloud’s Reinventing Comics (2000) where he presents possible forms of development for Internet comics. Various researchers have since studied different aspects on digital and web comics. It might also be useful to find out how reading in digital environments has been treated in different studies.

Hilda Ruokolainen