Anja Salzmann

AREA of EXPERTISE
I have expertise in research on the adoption of complex socio-technical systems by societal risk groups and in applying strategies and methods of the European Policy Framework Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). I am actively engaged in public debates about digitalisation in Norwegian schools, AI and ethics as well as societal consequences of dataveillance and digital (non-)human-centered technologies.

Currently, I am especially interested in questions on responsible development and adoption of desirable AI technologies in education that are human-centered, ecological sustainable and promoting social justice. I am also interested in implications of increasing rapid and chaotic digitalization on journalism, the public sphere and democracy.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
After my A-level education with special classes in arts and music at the Gymnasium Rutheneum in Gera/Germany, in the 90s I studied Applied Media Sciences at the Ilmenau University of Technology in Thuringia/Germany.This hybrid study allowed me to combine multiple disciplines with a focus on engineering, economy and social sciences. My study at the TU Ilmenau encompassed subjects such as informatics, higher mathematics, telematics and media technology, the basics of business administration, macroeconomics and civil law but also typical social-science-disciplines such politics, sociology and media and communication. One of my lecturers was the internationally reknown engineer and mathematician professor Karlheinz Brandenburg, founder of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (DMT), known for his elementary work in audio coding and developing the audio data compression format MP3 that has revolutionized the music industry in the late 1990s.Later on, and out of personal interest, I studied art history and German linguistics at the University of Bergen as well as one year pedagogy at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. The scope of different disciplines I got the opportunity to study, inspired my interest in philosophical and sociological questions as well as in critical theory. 

My educational background and broad range of interests has enabled me to look at societal issues from a broader disciplinary and analytical perspective, to detect visible and invisible links within and between different complex aspects and discplinary viewpoints.

It is the hybrid perspective on technology, economy and social sciences, but also my personal interest in philosophy, arts, technology and human history that drive my academic work.

DOCTORAL THESIS
In my doctoral thesis I have examined innovation in the field of mobile journalism by exploring how professional journalists and journalistic pioneers learn about and adopt mobile technology for their journalistic practice. I investigate critically the side effects from journalists’ adoption of mobile computing platforms, encompassing highly convergent and insufficiently understood risk technologies that are embedded in complex infrastructures and mainly driven by new emerging economic logics in the digital sphere.

         The findings of my empirical and analytic-theoretical work indicate to draw more attention towards individual, organizational, and societal risks attached to an uncritical and irresponsible adoption of a complex and pervasive computing platforms in journalism but also in other societal sectors.

         To counteract the identified and complex risks from comprehensive data extraction (that are bound to risk technologies such as artificial intelligence and catalyzed by new commercial logics of surveillance capitalism) I look more closely on academic discussions around the term `responsible innovation` and apply ideas and tools from the European framework Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).

My doctoral thesis was supervised by professor Frode Guribye (UiB) and professor Astrid Gynnild (co-supervisor).

GENERAL RESEARCH INTERESTS
risk technology, innovation theory, social system theory, learning theory, dataveillance, datafication, data ethics, machine ethics, digital literacy, desirable AI technologies, complex socio-technical systems, ethnography, digital economy, educational technology, learning analytics, journalism, mobile journalism, qualitative research, critical theory