For the 10th episode of the dialog format “postdigital lunch” of the Leibniz ScienceCampus – Postdigital Participation, PhD student Per Ole Uphaus and Prof. Harald Rau were able to present insights und discuss current key questions of their research about location-based services (LBS) in an expert discussion. The two members of the KomMa team are proud that they were able to win Dr. Roba Abbas from the University of Wollongong, an international expert in the field of location-based services regulation, for this discussion. Dr. Abbas is a Lecturer and Academic Program Director at the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Wollongong, Australia and Co-Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society.

Nowadays, users can be provided with location-specific, individualized information at any time with the help of LBS. This kind of information retrieval gives LBS the potential to fundamentally influence users’ communication behavior and their perception of news, and thus forms a crucial basis for digitally enabled forms of participation. But what are the socio-ethical implications of this participatory component? And do participatory LBS in particular require specific regulations? These and other exciting questions were discussed in detail at the 10th postdigital lunch. The entire event was streamed live on YouTube while audience participation was made possible via the live feedback system ‘Tweedback’.

The discussion proved to be very enriching and insightful for all participants and represents the third collaboration between Dr. Abbas and the KomMa team after taking part in our international Delphi study on the future of LBS  and a guest lecture for the Ostfalia’s communication management Master’s course  last year.

The KomMa team would like to thank Dr. Abbas for her willingness to discuss her work and share insights in this relevant field of research and looks forward to further opportunities for collaboration.

The full conversation can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/84KxsvhJgJQ