FSP 3: Research projects
Funding body: FWF
Duration: 1.1.2025-31.12.2028
Project management: Juliane Jarke
Project members: Leonie Winterpacht, Sara Skardelly
Project description: The prevalence of speech assistants taking orders, social bots influencing debates, and machines generating texts underscores the increasing sophistication of automated communication. Simultaneously, public discourse on these phenomena reflects the ongoing challenges associated with the automation of communication. It seems that the intricacies of today’s complex societies compel a reliance on automation to meet communication needs, while also generating additional issues for which automated communication appears to be the most plausible solution. The “Communicative AI“ Research Unit, funded by the DFG and the FWF, is investigating in nine projects and one coordination project how societal communication changes when communicative AI becomes part of it. Top researchers from the fields of media and communication studies, informatics, sociology and law are involved. The research focuses on pioneer communities, the development of interfaces, the legal handling and governance of communicative AI, its role in journalism, in public (online) discourse, in everyday personal life through technological companions, in the health sector and in learning and teaching. The project which is based at the University of Graz explores how different groups of older people (can) adopt communicative AI and how this shapes their ageing and ideas of "healthy age(ing)". This is being done using digital methods and qualitative case studies in Austria, Germany, the UK and the USA. LINK
Funded by: Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund
Duration: 1.10.2024-30.9.2026
Project management: Juliane Jarke and Anja Eder in collaboration with Tanja Klenk (Administrative Science, Helmut-Schmid-Universität Hamburg)
Project member: Carla Greubel
Project description: In Germany, the digital transformation coincides with another social transformation process: demographic change. If these two major social trends are considered together, the German pension insurance system is important as a central player in social self-administration. For a growing number of citizens, pension insurance is becoming the place where statehood materialises and can be experienced in everyday life. The research project examines (1) how the structures, processes and practices of social self-government are changing through digitalisation, (2) what opportunities and challenges are associated with this and (3) what contribution social self-government can make to an inclusive and citizen-centric digital state.
Funding body: Zukunftsfonds Steiermark
Duration: 1.5.2024-30.4.2025
Project management: Guilherme Maia de Oliveira Wood (Department of Psychology), Juliane Jarke (Business Analytics and Data Science Centre and Department of Sociology), Elisabeth Staudegger (Department of Law) and Thomas Gremsl (Department of Ethics and Social Sciences)
Project description: In this research project, an interdisciplinary research team will explore the potentials and risks of neurotechnologies with AI applications in the context of dementia. The project is based on a study conducted by the research team for the European Parliament and is intended to further strengthen expertise on neurotechnologies in Styria. Following on from the EU study, the research project evaluates the existing neurotechnology-AI landscape in Styria and formulates recommendations for the further development and application of these technologies. It aims to improve care and support for older people while taking ethical, legal and social issues into account.
Funding body: Volkswagen Foundation
Duration: November 2024
Project management: Juliane Jarke (University of Graz), Stefanie Büchner (University of Hanover), Irina Zakharova (University of Hanover) and Heidrun Allert (University of Kiel)
Project description: The funding allows a three-day meeting of 30 interdisciplinary scientists in the Herrenhaus Palace in Hanover, Germany. The participants considered questions of participation in a digital society. The results of the exchange are to be published in a position paper that discusses and visualises the real requirements of participation projects and develops research policy ideas for reviews and research funding.
Funding organisation: European Parliament
Duration: 2023-2024
Project managers: Juliane Jarke, Prof Dr Guilherme Wood (Psychology), Prof Dr Elisabeth Staudegger (Law), Prof Dr Thomas Gremsl (Social Ethics)
Projekt member: Gwendolin Barnard
Project description: This study addressed the legal, ethical and societal implications of the development of neuroenhancement technologies. It also assessed the need for the adoption and development of a new legal and regulatory framework at EU level. Such regulations should create legal certainty for the development and commercialisation of such technologies while providing safeguards against potential misuse and harm.
Neurorights: how to protect mental privacy in the area of neuroscience? (Video)
Project: ARGUS-FLEX
Project partners: Joanneum-Research, TU-Graz, Montan University, UAR-Robotics, BMI, BM f. National Defence, National Disaster Reduction Center of China
Duration: 2019-2021
Project manager: Gerhard Grossmann
Project description: Major incidents, crisis and disaster situations place enormous demands on authorities and emergency organisations as well as the affected population. Dynamic changes in security situations require rapid decision-making processes in order to be able to take efficient and targeted measures and to protect human lives and critical infrastructure as well as to reduce the impact on property and the environment. Various systems are used nationally and internationally in the area of crisis and disaster management for management support and staff work, for example the "Emergency Response Coordination Centre / ERCC". The mobile Scientifc Emergency Operation Centre / SEOC developed at the Institute of Sociology / Medical Sociology and Disaster Research is an on-site communication and information platform (the SEOC is located in a deployment container on an off-road army truck, is equipped with a complete emergency medical kit as well as its own communication system and an extensive database and has a satellite connection). On the one hand, the needs of the affected population are documented in the event of an emergency or disaster, and on the other hand, these are then passed on to the relevant emergency services in a targeted manner. Thanks to the possibility of using geographic information systems (GIS), the SEOC can be used to produce timely risk analyses, which then serve as a basis for decision-making by the respective emergency response teams. The SEOC is already being used very successfully in SAR (Search And Rescue) operations at sea on the sea rescue ship "SEASTAR" in Trieste. As part of the ARGUS-FLEX project (Innovative Management Solutions in Disaster Management), the SEOC has also been assigned a central role in optimising resilience in the event of a disaster.
Co-operation project with the AMS
Funded by: AMS Styria
Duration: until the end of 2018
Head: Johanna Muckenhuber
Project description: Austrian society is facing major challenges due to the relatively high number of refugees and migrants who have come to Austria in the last year. One of these challenges concerns the integration of migrants and refugees into the Austrian labour market. On the one hand, the effects of this integration concern the opportunities, but also the problems for the refugees and migrants themselves. On the other hand, it is also expected to have an impact on Austrian employees and the Austrian labour market. The project aims to analyse both sides and will be carried out in two stages. The first stage will focus on the opportunities and problems for refugees and migrants. The first stage was designed as a pilot project and will be concluded with a book publication in autumn 2017. The topic of the second stage of the project is the effects of the integration of refugees and migrants into the labour market on Austrian employees. The second stage of the project will be completed by the end of 2018.
Funding body: Province of Styria
Funding amount: € 92,401.49
Duration: February 2017- January 2019
Project team at the Institute of Sociology: Johanna Muckenhuber (project manager), Karin Scaria-Braunstein; and: Annette Sprung (Department of Educational Sciences), Gertraud Pantucek (Social Work and Social Management degree programme, FH Joanneum), Verena Kiegerl (Interactive Children's and Youth Theatre).
Project description: The JuKult project takes an interdisciplinary approach to researching the living environments of Styrian young people with and without a migration background with the aim of identifying factors that mobilise integration as well as those that hinder it, and making the challenges of intercultural communication and interaction between young people identifiable. The project focuses on identity-building and recognition processes that can open up the possibility of creating a new, shared youth culture within and outside of school. A theatre intervention and accompanying research will be used to test and analyse the extent to which young people show a willingness to adopt the perspectives of others and which aspects of this intervention can be transferred to everyday life. Creative quantitative and qualitative research methods will also be used to analyse the young people's social networks.
Funding body: Province of Styria
Funding amount: € 91,000
Duration: 2017-2018
Project team at the Institute of Sociology: Anja Eder, Eva Griesbacher, Sabine Haring, Franz Höllinger (project management); as well as: Rudolf Egger (Department of Education), Günther Löschnigg (Department of Labour and Social Law), Josef Hödl (Social Work and Social Management degree programme, FH Joanneum), Dorit Haubenhofer (University of Agricultural and Environmental Education, Vienna)
Project description: In this interdisciplinary research project, farms with green care programmes (school on the farm, garden therapy, animal-assisted intervention, integration projects for the disabled, mentally ill, etc.) in Styria are examined. We are investigating the question of which socio-economic and family conditions are conducive to the realisation of Green Care on farms and what advantages and disadvantages this form of income combination entails for farms and Green Care partners. At the same time, the legal framework conditions surrounding Green Care will be analysed. The second phase of the project will analyse from a socio-educational perspective how green care concepts are implemented in practice and how they are assessed by the stakeholders involved. The research project aims to make a contribution to facilitating the implementation of the forward-looking Green Care operating concept and to pave the way for innovative income combinations in Styrian agriculture.