Media Appearances 2021
18 December 2021: Digitalisation as one major challenge of our times
Austrian daily newspaper "Die Presse" featured an interview with EIF's director Gerda Falkner. Although it seems harsh to confront people with yet another big task in difficult times, ending the now ubiquitous data collection by private economic actors and the micro-targeting or nudging of citizens seems key to making our democracies future-proof, she argues.
10 December 2021: How Big Data affects democracy
Gerda Falkner, head of EIF, was invited to the Edition Zukunft-podcast of the newspaper Der Standard to explain the consequences of constant data collection for individual citizens as well as democracy overall. Listen to the podcast here (in German).
3 December 2021: Germany and EU fiscal rules
In an interview for Euractiv, Magnus Schoeller shared his expertise on EU fiscal rules and Germany's position to them. Read the English version and German original here.
17 June 2021: The importance of back-ups
Considering that we live in the "age of the cyber-attack" (The Guardian) and possibly even a "new era of information warfare" (Financial Times), EIF's Head Gerda Falkner recently warned that Europe urgently needs a "Joint Cyber Unit" worthy of its name, as well as updates and upgrading of its relevant regulations. Universities and public infrastructures should try to have their data securely backed up: offline. Read her recommendations in the Wiener Zeitung.
25 May 2021: Commentary in the Wiener Zeitung
Gerda Falkner urges the public and officials to learn lessons from the ransomware attack that paralysed the IT systems of the Irish health services and additionally compromised the servers holding highly confidential health and employment records. Read her analysis in the Wiener Zeitung.
11 May 2021: Coverage of public lecture
At an international conference on Technology Assessment, Gerda Falkner spoke on the necessity of integrating perspectives from different scientific fields to assure that digitalisation does not erode democracy and set the path towards digital dictatorship. Her contribution was covered in a variety of outlets: ORF [Austrian Public Broadcast]; Kronen Zeitung (online); Drei News (online); Extradienst (online).
12 April 2021: Interview by the International Institute for Peace
In the context of the Conference for the Future of Europe the International Institute for Peace conducted an interview with EIF Pre-Doc Elke Schraik on Europe and Digitalisation.
