The current practice of paying for the "use of personal data" for free use of platforms of digital communication, information services, etc. is opaque for many users. Furthermore, problematic influences on purchasing behaviour, preference formation and participation in political processes of users are becoming apparent.

Against this backdrop, a social conflict space has emerged in the area of online advertising, in which concerns are expressed by the business community about over-regulation of the use of digital behavioural data on the internet. The concerns of the business community relate to the loss of competitiveness of German companies. These concerns are countered by fears on the part of the population that too extensive use, or use of personal data that is not legally legitimised, contradicts the interests of individual citizens, social groups, and the goal of informational self-determination.

The Td-Lab Data Economy is composed of 4 representatives of online marketing, market research, a leading "digital academy" and law firm as well as four academics. The focus was on "the online market concept based on the concept of the responsible citizen", "the safeguarding of the inviolability/and vulnerability of the individual", and "the necessity of a new concept of ownership for the intangible asset of digital data".

Contact partners: Anna Schenk and Roland W. Scholz

The objective is described by the following long version of the guiding question for this report:

• What impact will disruptive events, catastrophes, and systemic risks from the areas of climate change, pandemics or cybercrime have on the performance of the German health system in the areas of prevention, treatment, rehabilitation or care over the next 15 years?
• How can these disruptive events be depicted in threat scenarios and neuralgic points identified?
• Which measures of precautionary risk minimisation and emergency planning are to be provided at the federal level - also in interaction with other actors (civil society and economy) as well as levels (global, regional, local) in order to reduce the vulnerability of the German health system for the occurrence of such threat scenarios

The report with executive summary can be found here:

Scholz, R. W., Batschkus, M., Glaeske, G., Hofmann, K. M., May, T. W., & Völker, S. (2022). Transdisciplinary vulnerability analysis of the health care system in Germany: Expert opinion for the German Bundestag. sttm: DiDaT Next Level Arbeitsgemeinschaft DiDaT Next Level (DiDaT NeLe).

This transdisciplinarity lab deals comparatively with how SMEs in Lusatia and Franconia deal with the challenges posed by the digital transformation (DigiTra). One of the main findings of the SoROs of the VR SME was that SMEs do not receive sufficient support for the adaptations they have to make. For this reason, a project is being carried out at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, at the Chair of Prof. Magdalena Mißler-Behr, in cooperation with the Faculty 5 Economics and the Faculty Globalisation of the Danube University Krems (DUK) (Prof. Roland W. Scholz), in which concrete solution models for the challenges of adapting to digital structures are being developed for individual companies for 6 SMEs each from Lusatia and Franconia.

This project is part of the applied teaching research in which students of the BTU's Business Administration programme, graduates, and doctoral students of the DUK, as well as experienced researchers, work together with companies, representatives of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the MUNICH CIRCLE, etc., to develop concrete solutions that can be used as a model by others.

To promote the research project on the evaluation of scenarios on the offer and use of social media by young people (Vodafone Foundation)

Society today is characterised by a multitude of digital and internet-based innovations. This has some advantages, but also some disadvantages, which were examined in various areas in the transdisciplinary DiDaT project (Digital Data as the Subject of a Transdisciplinary Process). The reflections of the working group on social media of the DiDaT project gave rise to the study presented here. The project is one of several follow-up projects of DiDaT..

Cornelia Sindermann (project leader)
Prof. em. ETH Dr. Roland Scholz
Prof. Dr. Christian Montag
M.Sc. Nana Löchner
M.Sc. Rebecca Heinzelmann
Laura Waldmann