ISHANDS-SEM-B: Digital Responsibility: Social, Ethical, and Ecological Implications of IS

Overview and Objective

The Chair of Information Systems, Health and Society in the Digital Age offers a combined Bachelor’s and Master’s seminar. This semester’s topic focuses on digital responsibility, specifically the social, ethical, and ecological implications of digital technologies.

Topics

The increasing digitalization of our world impacts nearly every aspect of life—from business and society to politics and the environment. While digital technologies drive innovation and efficiency, they also bring significant social, ethical, and ecological challenges.

Socially, digital technologies improve access to healthcare and enable personalized treatments but also raise concerns about stress from constant digital exposure and biases in algorithmic decision-making that may lead to discrimination and unfair outcomes. Ethically, digital technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) improve efficiency and decision-making yet raise concerns about moral dilemmas, privacy issues, the misuse of such digital technologies, and the erosion of ethical standards. Ecologically, digital technologies such as smart home and internet of things (IoT) devices can contribute to sustainability goals by supporting environmentally friendly practices, but their success depends on widespread adoption and effective integration into daily life. 

This seminar explores how digital responsibility can balance these competing forces, focusing on the social, ethical, and ecological implications of digital technologies. Students will critically assess risks and opportunities and develop insights for responsible digital technologies, reflected in the following topics:

1. Foundations of Digital Responsibility (Note: Especially suitable for Bachelor students)
2. Social Implications of Digital Technologies
3. Ethical Implications of Digital Technologies
4. Ecological Implications of Digital Technologies 

Timeline of the seminar

• The initial meeting with all seminar participants will be on Friday, April 25th (10:00 am)
• The deadline for the seminar paper will be on Friday, July 11th (11:55 pm)
• The presentations will be held in person as part of a block seminar starting on Friday, July 18th to Saturday, July 19th
• Seminar papers and presentations are to be submitted digitally via upload in the Virtual Campus (VC)

Evaluation of the seminar

• 66.6 percent on the written exam (seminar paper)
• 33.3 percent on the vocal exam (presentation and discussion)
• Note: Students need to pass each the written (seminar paper) and the vocal exam (presentation and discussion) with at least a sufficient grade (“ausreichend”) to pass the seminar §9 (10) (APO der Fakultät Wirtschaftsinformatik und Angewandte Informatik)

Application for the seminar

• Application deadline is Friday, April 18th (12:00 am)
• Please apply by completing the form below and indicate your preferred topics
• You will receive an email between Friday, April 18th, and Thursday, April 24th, telling you whether your application was successful.
• Note: please check your email regularly – if we do not receive an acceptance email from you, we will allow other students to participate in the seminar.
• If you want to join another seminar, please contact Florian Wintmölle (florian. wintmölle@uni-bamberg.de) and disclose your decision so other students can participate.
• In exceptional cases (e.g., if spots become available due to dropouts), late applications may be considered.

Further requirements of the seminar:

• While we want to motivate students to submit the seminar paper and/or present their results in English, there is the possibility to submit and/or present in German
• The length of the seminar paper follows international guidelines.
• The presentation should be between 15 and 20 minutes.