Politikwissenschaft, insb. Politische Theorie

Cognitive Warfare is an emerging concept that is subject to discourses in military and academic spheres. For effective communication and constructive research the mutual intelligibility between different areas of research is paramount. This work contributes to the intelligibility of different areas of Cognitive Warfare research by examining the Cognitive Warfare concept in military as well as scientific publications and investigating the relation of the Cognitive Warfare concept to the neighboring concepts Hybrid Threats and Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference.

Cognitive Warfare, Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), Hybrid Threats – how does disinformation strategically target vulnerabilities within democratic institutions? Rather than being competitive, these concepts are complementary and pertain to distinct societal domains. A nuanced understanding of disinformation in varied conceptual, social, and strategic contexts equips policymakers and defence agencies to craft cohesive, context-specific responses, effectively countering disinformation's impact on democratic systems.

The article concerns the case of #WirVsVirus, a civic hackathon organized in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and officially endorsed by Germany’s federal government. It aims to address the normative implications of this politically oriented technological format. Specifically, it asks how civic hackathons formulate and negotiate different political representation claims. Our analysis shows that the hackathon constituted a successful representative claim on behalf of civic tech initiatives vis-à-vis the administrative state. While this claim primarily concerned establishing a new format for efficient and subsidiary problem-solving in the wake of the crisis, the hackathon’s participatory promises have only been partially fulfilled. The hackathon was rather open to input from civil society, enabling it to attract substantial public interest. Nonetheless, its technological-organizational structure and competitive, solution-oriented procedures meant that decision-making power remained largely with the hackathon’s organizers.

Wie verändert Künstliche Intelligenz politische und Regierungskommunikation? Ziel des Reports ist es den Forschungsstand zum Einsatz von Verfahren künstlicher Intelligenz in öffentlicher, politischer und Regierungskommunikation zu erfassen, systematisch einzuordnen und zu analysieren, um mögliche Anwendungsbereiche und Entwicklungstrends zu identifizieren und entsprechende Möglichkeiten zur Weiterentwicklung regierungsamtlicher Kommunikation im Speziellen und Regierungskommunikation im Allgemeinen vorzulegen. Die Untersuchung ist anhand eines analytischen Rasters strukturiert, das den jeweiligen Forschungsstand in drei Dimensionen unterteilt und deren gegenseitige Wechselwirkungen aufzeigt.