Open Password – Monday July 19, 2021
#949
ISI 2021 – B. Jörs – Information Behavior – Information Science – Library Science – Information Ethics – Information Competence – Information Assessment – W. Rauch – University Information Science – JEPanskus – W. Umstätter – Information Economics – Information Practice – Loss of Acceptance – Google Alphabet – Search Engine Technology – Information Retrieval – R. Hammwöhner – W. Bredemeier – M. Klems – Open Password – Wirecard – Greensill Bank – EY – Auditing – J. Schwind – Labor market and practical relevance – TU Munich – Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems – Amazon – Facebook – Data Science – Artificial Intelligence – TH Cologne – FH Potsdam – University of Media – Data and Information Science – Information and Data Management – Digital Data Management – Data Driven – HU Berlin – Digital Library – Gen Y – Gen Z – Alienation – DGI – C. Stoll – False Prophets – W. Stock – Gerhard Lustig Prize – R. Kuhlen – W. Semar – D. Strauch –
Deloitte – Media Consumer Survey – Video market – Willingness to pay – Subscriptions – Paid offers – Advertising financing – Video on demand – Super aggregator – Linear television – Klaus Böhm – Heavy users – Non-linear content – Live broadcasts – Bundesliga – Pay TV – Age groups – Media libraries – Pandemic – Monetization through advertising – TVNOW – Joyn – Networked screens – Individualization – Intelligent aggregation – DINI – Sustainability of information infrastructures
I
Cover story
ISI 2021: A small subject between “data” and “knowledge” (2) – By Bernd Jörs
II.
Deloitte Consumer Survey: Three quarters of German households pay for
video streaming – One in three are interested in a super aggregator
III.
DINI: Sustainability of information infrastructures
ISI 2021
A small compartment
between “data” and “knowledge” II
Notes on the (virtual) “16th International Symposium of Information Science” (ISI 2021), Regensburg)
By Prof. Dr. Bernd Jörs, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences
Bernd Jörs
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Only information ethics, information literacy and information assessment?
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But it is precisely the isolation from other disciplines that increases the isolation of the “small subject” of information science in the scientific community. The only remaining “independent” research areas left are those that Wolf Rauch, as keynote speaker, already named in his introductory, historical-genetic lecture on the state of information science at ISI 2021:
“ Although university information science (at least in Europe) has little chance of returning to the forefront of development in the development of systems and applications, there remain areas in which its contribution will be urgently needed in the coming development phase: Information ethics, information competence, information assessment “(Wolf Rauch: What has become of information science; in: Thomas Schmidt; Christian Wolff (Eds): Information between Data and Knowledge. Writings on information science 74, Regensburg, 2021, pages 20-22 – see also the reception of Rauch’s contribution by Johannes Elia Panskus, What has become of information science has arrived in reality, in: Open Password, March 17, 2021).
That’s all? Sobering.
The closure of further information science courses and chairs seems to be inevitable. Because Rauch goes one better:
“ The following generation from 1980/1990 to today (the “Silver Age”) brought an almost explosive growth in information science and has made this subject one of the largest scientific disciplines in the world – albeit outside of universities ” (W. Rauch; ibid; p .20).
On the one hand, Rauch points out the opinion, which he and other representatives of information science arrogantly represent, that “information science is one of the largest scientific disciplines in the world”. This statement is based on megalomania and is strikingly reminiscent of the statement by Amanda Schwarm (alias Prof. Dr. em. Umstätter, HU Berlin, 3/2016 ):
“Shouldn’t we admire and praise the wisdom and foresight of the faculty council of the Faculty of Philosophy in Düsseldorf? .. This would have shown that in the information age there can hardly be a more important science than information science. “
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Allowing the decline of a practical and labor market-oriented information economy.
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The last note from Rauch’s statement, however, hits the sore point of academic marginalization: information science and information practice take place “but outside the university”. With this, Rauch points to the loss of acceptance of information science in the scientific community, to the fact that with the advent of Google/Alphabet in 1998, German information science constantly missed its opportunities by not participating in the production of competitive and commercializable solutions to search engine technology (although this was the case given their Research area “Information Retrieval” would have been obvious), the lack of theory in information science (R. Hammwöhner, W. Bredemeier) as well as the decline of the practical information economy, the decline of which was watched for years by doing nothing professionally and turning a blind eye (DGI: “We are not the one ADAC of Information Science”, M. Klems, in: Open Password, February 3, 2016).
For decades, economic and financial information was the cornerstone of a successful university education in information science. If these areas are now removed from the curriculum, as was done with the re-accreditation of the “Information Science” degree program at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, one should not be surprised that there was then a tsunami-like collapse in student demand. As a result, information science and the job market have become further apart and the professional opportunities of students who still choose the Darmstadt course of study have declined. In this case, information science actively pursued its own cannibalization.
Promising counter-strategies would have been possible and are obvious. How would it be if information professionals and research departments took up events and developments that were heavily discussed in the media and, in the event of scandals, made a public contribution to preventing and limiting damage? There is, for example, the Wirecard scandal with all its fake news fraud, accounting falsifications and auditing (EY) failures, which cost shareholders and taxpayers between 1.9 and 3.2 billion euros. There is currently the case of the Greensill Bank, which caused the municipalities a loss of 500 million euros. Wouldn’t information science, with all its information and media expertise, have had something to say about this? These examples could have shown how information behavior knowledge, brought into an information science context, could have contributed to clarifying the connections.
- Schwind showed how exactly this should have been done in his study “Information processing by auditors when examining estimated values – a behavioral and empirical analysis” (Wiesbaden 2011). However, Schwind belongs to a different discipline. And questions about the information economy have not been discussed at the ISI conferences for a long time, although it is precisely the information economy issues that would bring relevance to the discipline as well as relevance to the labor market and practical application.
No wonder that Rauch had to state in his opening keynote that scientific development outside the universities is being driven forward in the GAFA companies. Once again, information science has itself to blame for its lack of participation. When the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences “shoots” university qualifications in business and financial information, online and social media as well as e-commerce from the curricular information science qualification offerings and then names itself the best and leading German KIBA course (KIBA = Information Conference – and library science training and courses), then loss of reality and academic decline go hand in hand. Instead of showing this excess of self-confidence, the creators of the new Darmstadt course would have done better to read from Peter Morville (Information Architecture), an evangelist of the American LIS scene, about everything they willingly and unknowingly gave up.
Do we remember the years when information science successfully made its way and thereby advanced information science as a whole? Everything seemed to be successful on the part of the traditional information economy. National awards were achieved. New young target groups were strongly attracted. But at some point, people in the small field of scientifically isolated and, according to Hammwöhner, theory-free information science simply didn’t want to do it anymore.
Since then, contacts with companies have been frowned upon. If they are proposed, they will pose dangers to academic freedom. Universities of excellence such as the Technical University of Munich and the Tübingen Max Plank Institute do not share these fears. Facebook is funding the Technical University of Munich with 7.5 million euros and Amazon is enabling the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Tübingen) to set up a new research center with 1.25 million euros). Anyone who forgoes such options from the outset will eventually not be able to keep up with scientific developments for reasons of resources and quality. You are no longer taken seriously and are not invited to the really important scientific conferences.
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Hardly noticed by data science and artificial intelligence.
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These considerations also and especially apply to AI and data science research. Here as elsewhere, looking away and ignoring leads to isolation. The ten million euros mentioned by W. Rauch for the annual financing of information and library courses in the DACH region do not help either. The GAFAs of this world invest hundreds of billions per company per year!
The organizers of the ISI conference saw “Information Science”, as the title of their conference said, only as a small neighbor to “Data Science” and “Digital Humanities”. Representatives from the digital humanities had been invited, but scientific representatives from (mathematics-computer science-related) data science were missing from the conference. There is probably no interest in computer science, mathematics or data science in taking part in conferences in such a “small subject”.
In view of the rapid rise of data science, several information science courses at the TH Cologne, at the FH Potsdam and at the Stuttgart Media University have quickly launched new bachelor’s or master’s courses that aim to combine the two: “Data and Information Science”, “Information and data management” and “Digital data management” (HU Berlin & FH Potsdam). Unfortunately, representatives of these “data driven” directions in information science did not have a chance to speak in the lecture program of the ISI 2021, although the subtitle of the ISI 2021 spoke of “Information Science and its Neighbors from Data Science to Digital Humanities”.
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Is information science at its end? Library science will probably stay.
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So is information science finished? Only library science will remain, and only if it is not taken over by computer science in the form of a “digital library”. Will this also lead to the closure of library courses, as was considered as a possible scenario in the final panel of ISI 2021? Will this further reduce the demand for young librarians in Germany, a school country that is hostile to MINT?
Library science is already suffering from a lack of young talent, as was noted at the final panel on the third day of ISI 2021. Over the years, people have become too alienated from the young talent. Now “influencers” or “systematic personnel planning” should help. What hopelessness these views express. The failure of “information marketing” in information and library science is not acknowledged. The respective specialist representatives are trusted blindly. The blame is more likely to be attributed to the public authorities, who paid unattractive salaries, offered too few E13 positions and did not necessarily allow specialists with a library background into higher-paying management positions.
These complaints are not wrong, but they also obscure the true causes of the crisis. The young generation of Gen Y and Z are giving library science a wide berth and, increasingly, information science. Their training and job market worlds no longer fit their expectations for a long time. It seems that the alienation from Generations Y and Z can no longer be stopped. The loss of attractiveness, which has been criticized for years, has not been corrected because the specialist representatives have lost touch with their young target groups. You can no longer reach them. Instead, the Master’s program in Information Science at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences is looking forward to training graduates in the humanities who have completed their doctorates but are unemployed, as was happily announced in the final panel of the ISI 2021. Yes, it’s easy to sit in the academic ivory tower if you yourself are almost uncancellable. Consequences for one’s own actions can only be feared in the event of closures of KIBA study programs and any associated changes in location.
For years, professional associations in the library and documentary sectors have experienced a massive decline in membership. Young talent in particular is no longer being reached. Elisabeth Simon, a grande dame of information and library science, pointed out this problem years ago:
“ I am always horrified that Germany sometimes looks askance and sometimes bitterly at the new developments in the area of digitalization in the USA and does not see that further development in this area can only be achieved through broader training and the inclusion of the young generation in this development can, Germany had major deficits in the development of its library system; These have continued in the development and training of information professionals.”
But views from an experienced publisher can be ignored. You prefer to be among yourself. An impression that also came to mind at ISI 2021, as almost all of the speakers came from our own company. A position paper from the then German Information Society (DGI) from 2010 called for help:
“The DGI must be made visible and attractive again for young people in information science and information practice”… “It is also crucial here to involve the young members in the association’s work in terms of content and organization” (C. Stoll: German Society for Information Science and Information Practice eV (DGI), 2010).
The result: Young people are still not interested in qualifying in libraries and information sciences. The existential threat still exists. Some of those responsible followed the false prophets (Karger, Siegel, Weisel). The train left. The problems with young talent have been known for a long time, as a look back at the ISI 2011 shows. Advice like that given by W. Stock at the DGI conference 2012 was also given:
“It’s about our shared future, including yours.”
These warnings were accepted in silence. Large parts of information science also reacted to the closure of W. Stock’s chair at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf with passivity.
It was worthwhile for the ISI 2021 to offer younger young scientists a platform (including the Gerhard Lustig Prize). However, this does not make up for the massive loss of attractiveness in attracting talented young scientists for practice that has been swept under the carpet.
How can it be other than that German information science indulges in a wallflower existence in the scientific publishing landscape, as R. Kuhlen, W. Semar and D. Strauch noted in 2013:
“ In a…carried out scientometric analysis (Grazia Colonia)…50 information science publications (some of them exclusively library-related) were examined. In this study, no very impactful result was determined for these specialist journals in information science / information and liberal science: worldwide, information science journals only had an average impact factor of 0.4. The publication organs preferred in Germany for narrower information science, Information – Science and Practice (IWP) and the proceedings of the ISI conferences, currently play almost no role in terms of impact (with values of 0.2 and 0.01 respectively). (R. Kuhlen, W. Semar, D. Strauch (eds.): Basics of practical information and documentation, 6th edition, 2013, page 10) .
Unfortunately, little will change in the near future even after the results of the ISI 2021.
Deloitte Consumer Survey
Three quarters of German households
pay for video streaming
One in three interested in a super aggregator
- High willingness to pay: In German households there are an average of 1.5 subscriptions for TV/video paid offers – and the trend is rising.
- Half of users are open to ad-supported video-on-demand services.
- Given the variety of providers, more than a third of those surveyed would like a “one-stop shop” for video consumption .
(Deloitte) Sitting in front of the television at 8:15 p.m. because that’s when the blockbuster that everyone is talking about tomorrow starts? What was common practice for generations of TV viewers is increasingly disappearing from the everyday lives of German consumers. Numerous video-on-demand providers are vying for users’ screen time. Despite its continually growing popularity, it is still too early to say goodbye to linear television. In order to map and analyze the dynamics on the moving image market, Deloitte surveyed 2000 consumers about their video usage for the 15th edition of the Media Consumer Survey.
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Digital is causing movement in the video market
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Klaus Böhm, Head of Media & Entertainment at Deloitte, summarizes. “Non-linear video usage has been increasing continuously in Germany since 2015. Only 27 percent of those surveyed said they hardly used any non-linear offerings at all. In contrast, there are 17 percent of so-called heavy users who spend more than half of their relevant screen time on non-linear content. However, the majority of consumers currently rely on a mix of linear and non-linear.”
Compared to the 2019 survey, the proportion of users who watch both linear and non-linear formats has grown by 9 percent to a total of 41 percent. Linear television can still score points with live broadcasts. Especially during the pandemic-related restrictions on sports, live TV broadcasts of ghost games in the Bundesliga were in demand among fans. In addition to the streaming-based sports services, which are now used by 15 percent of those surveyed, linear pay TV in particular benefited from this.________________________________________________________________________________
Linear television cannot score points even during the pandemic
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Only linear television could not benefit from contact and exit restrictions. The proportion of people who watched less traditional television in the last year even predominates. This continues the development trend of recent years: the declines in linear TV are by no means very large, but they are continuous. At the same time, media users are increasingly accepting digital competition.
The trend towards digital affects all age groups. Common video-on-demand services are particularly popular in the middle-aged segment. The leaders here are 24 to 35 year olds with a user share of 74 percent (average across all ages: 56 percent). However, the proportion of users falls significantly among consumers over 55. The digital offerings of private broadcasters and streaming-based sports services are also primarily used by media users between 20 and 45. The picture is completely different for media libraries, which are particularly popular with older people and have their largest following with a user share of 63 percent in the 65+ generation (cross-age average: 48 percent).
The big winners of the past twelve months remain video-on-demand subscriptions. 52 percent of those surveyed said they had used services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime & Co. more in the last year. Three quarters of German households have now taken out at least one paid subscription to a streaming service. In 10 percent of households there are already four or more subscriptions. The great popularity of video-on-demand subscriptions shows that paid content is being accepted by more and more consumers. The pandemic has further accelerated the process: Last year, 25 percent of those surveyed said they were more open to paid offers than before the pandemic._________________________________________________________________________________
Users are open to new forms of advertising – also in the VoD area
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While video-on-demand has established itself in Germany predominantly in the form of paid offerings based on subscriptions, monetization in the Asia-Pacific region and partly in the USA also takes place via advertising. There are already corresponding attempts in this country with platforms such as TVNOW or Joyn. The reactions of study participants to such models are promising: across all ages, 50 percent of participants would use ad-financed video-on-demand. In the age group between 35 and 44 years, two out of three respondents are even interested. Even in the 65+ age group, a third of media users are open to such services.
Personalized advertising would also be exciting for linear television. Individually tailored commercials and advertising messages can also be played in linear television programs via networked screens. In return, consumers have to provide their user data for the highly individualized spots. Across all ages, two out of ten respondents would prefer spots tailored specifically to their interests to traditional advertising. However, a clear majority of media users in Germany remain cautious for the time being________________________________________________________________________________
Too much diversity? Consumers increasingly want a super aggregator._________________________________________________________________________________
On the consumer side, a “luxury problem” is becoming increasingly apparent: the variety of offers is leading more and more users to enter into contracts with different content providers. The result is a confusing constellation of available content and notice periods. A super aggregator that promises central access to all relevant video services with just one subscription could provide a solution here.
Across all ages, 35 percent of those surveyed are interested in bundling their contracts with a super aggregator. Two years ago the proportion was 20 percent. This enormous growth is primarily due to the great popularity of the offers for consumers between 19 and 44 years of age. In these age segments, almost every second person is open to a super aggregator. This is especially true for heavy users.
“Video is becoming increasingly digital, diverse and fragmented – and media users in Germany are also accepting the new video diversity,” says Klaus Böhm. “Even the 65+ age group is now open to on-demand content. There is a need for action particularly in the area of intelligent aggregation. With smart bundling and intelligent search and recommendation functions, a super aggregator could not only create added value for its users, but at the same time open up new marketing opportunities for itself and its partners.”
German initiative for network information
Sustainability of information infrastructures
The 22nd annual conference of the German Initiative for Network Information (DINI) will take place from October 5th to 6th, 2021. The conference is dedicated to the sustainability of digital information infrastructures. (DINI) The 22nd annual conference of the German Initiative for Network Information (DINI) will take place from October 5th to 6th, 2021. The focus of this year’s annual conference is on the challenges surrounding the sustainable operation of information infrastructures for research, teaching and knowledge transfer. This year the conference will also be organized in digital format.
The conference offers experts from universities and non-university institutions the opportunity to broadly address the challenges of sustainability in the conception, development and operation of information infrastructures for research, teaching and transfer in the context of digitalization. Digital research data management, the publication and archiving of research software, the development of research information systems and the design of open access transformation are four of the diverse aspects that the speakers will illuminate from the perspective of sustainability. Corona has also changed working in universities. Digital collaboration in support processes, teaching and research in particular is experiencing a major change. What will remain of it?
Among other things. speak:
- Dr. Jens-Peter Gaul (University Rectors’ Conference) on the status of the DEAL project
scientific organizations promoting open access;
- Prof. Dr. Konrad Förstner (ZB MED) on digital services for science;
- Dr. Fabian Trinkel (Jülich Research Center) on sustainability management
Helmholtz Association;
– Prof. Dr. Ramin Yahyapour (GWDG) on the challenges of sustainable
Research data management in data centers;
- Kai Dornseiff (Human Digital) on self-organization and adaptability
University structures.
The conference is divided into the aspects (1) sustainability through organization – implementing innovative process and organizational models, (2) sustainability through openness – developing and shaping an open knowledge culture and (3) sustainability through structure – managing, sharing, networking data.
The preliminary program can be found at:
The annual conference is accompanied by a poster exhibition. The Call for Posters ends on September 1, 2021. Further information: Call for Posters – German Initiative for Network Information eV (dini.de)
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