team

/ Fabio Chiusi

Editor, author of the journalistic story and research chapter on Italy and the UK as well as of the introduction and the EU chapter

Photo: Julia Bornkessel Fabio Chiusi works at AlgorithmWatch as the co-editor and project manager for the 2020 edition of the Automating Society report. After a decade in tech reporting, he started as a consultant and assistant researcher in data and politics (Tactical Tech) and AI in journalism (Polis LSE). He coordinated the “Persuasori Social” report about the regulation of political campaigns on social media for the PuntoZero Project, and he worked as a tech-policy staffer within the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament during the current legislation. Fabio is a fellow at the Nexa Center for Internet & Society in Turin and an adjunct professor at the University of San Marino, where he teaches journalism and new media and publishing and digital media. He is the author of several essays on technology and society, the latest being “Io non sono qui. Visioni e inquietudini da un futuro presente” (DeA Planeta, 2018), which is currently being translated into Polish and Chinese. He also writes as a techpolicy reporter for the collective blog ValigiaBlu.

/ Samuel Daveti

Comic artist

Samuel Daveti is a founding member of the Cultural Association, Double Shot. He is the author of the French language graphic-novel, Akron Le guerrier (Soleil, 2009), and he is the curator of the anthological volume Fascia Protetta (Double Shot, 2009). In 2011, he became a founding member of the self-produced comics collective, Mammaiuto. Samuel also wrote Un Lungo Cammino (Mammaiuto, 2014; Shockdom, 2017), which will become a film for the media company Brandon Box. In 2018, he wrote The Three Dogs, with drawings by Laura Camelli, which won the Micheluzzi Prize at Napoli Comicon 2018 and the Boscarato award for the best webcomic at the Treviso Comic Book Festival.

/ Catherine Egli

Author of the research chapter on Switzerland

Catherine Egli recently graduated with a double bilingual master’s in law degree from the Universities of Basel and Geneva. Her thesis focused on automated individual decision-making and the need for regulation in the Swiss Administrative Procedure Act. Alongside her studies, she worked for the chair of Prof. Dr. Nadja Braun Binder by conducting research on legal issues related to automated decision-making. Her favorite topics of research include the division of powers, digitization of public administration, and digital democracy.

/ Ronan Ó Fathaigh

Author of the research chapter on the Netherlands

Ronan Ó Fathaigh is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam. He is a member of the Digital Transformation of Decision-Making research initiative, examining the normative implications of the shift toward automated decision-making and the effect on democratic values and fundamental rights. Ronan has published his work in a number of international academic journals and co-authored reports for international institutions such as the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. He has also co-authored a report for the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs on online disinformation and political advertisements, and he has conducted research on automated decision-making in content moderation systems, as part of a joint research initiative of IViR and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania. Ronan has a PhD in law from Ghent University, and he is a former visiting research fellow at Columbia University. Ronan is a regular contributor to the Strasbourg Observers blog, commenting on current human rights issues.

/ Sarah Fischer

Editor

Sarah Fischer is a project manager for the “Ethics of Algorithms” project at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, in which she is primarily responsible for the scientific studies. She has previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the graduate program “Trust and Communication in a Digitalized World” at the University of Münster where she focused on the topic of trust in search engines. In the same research training group, she earned her doctorate with a thesis on trust in health services on the Internet. She studied communication science at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, and she is the co-author of the papers “Where Machines can err. Sources of error and responsibilities in processes of algorithmic decision making” and “What Germany knows and believes about algorithms”.

/ Leonard Haas

Additional editing

Leonard Haas works as a research assistant at AlgorithmWatch. Among other things, he was responsible for the conception, implementation, and maintenance of the AI Ethics Guidelines Global Inventory. He is a master’s student in the field of social sciences at the Humboldt University Berlin and holds two Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Leipzig in Digital Humanities and Political Science. His research focuses on the automation of work and governance. In addition, he is interested in public interest data policy and labor struggles in the tech industry.

/ Graham Holliday

Copy editing

Photo: Josh White Graham Holliday is a freelance editor, author, and journalism trainer. He has worked in a number of roles for the BBC for almost two decades, and he was a correspondent for Reuters in Rwanda. He works as an editor for CNN’s Parts Unknown and Roads & Kingdoms – the international journal of foreign correspondence. The late Anthony Bourdain published Graham’s first two books, which were reviewed in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal, and on NPR, among other outlets.

/ Anne Kaun

Author of the research chapter on Sweden

Anne Kaun is an associate professor in media and communication studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Her research interests include media activism, media practices, critical studies of algorithms, automation, and artificial intelligence. Together with Fredrik Stiernstedt, she is currently pursuing a larger project on the media history and media future of prisons. In addition, she is studying automated decision-making in the public sector and its implications for the welfare state as well as democratic values. As part of this work, she facilitates the Swedish Network on Automated Decision-Making in the Public Sector that gathers scholars from diverse disciplines studying algorithmic automation in Sweden.

/ Nikolas Kayser-Bril

Editor and author of the research chapter on France and author of the journalistic stories on Denmark, France, Germany and Switzerland

Photo: Julia Bornkessel Nicolas Kayser-Bril is a data journalist, and he works for AlgorithmWatch as a reporter. He pioneered new forms of journalism in France and Europe and is one of the leading experts on data journalism. He regularly speaks at international conferences, teaches journalism in French journalism schools, and gives training sessions in newsrooms. A self-taught journalist and developer (and a graduate in Economics), he started by developing small interactive, data-driven applications for Le Monde in Paris in 2009. He then built the data journalism team at OWNI in 2010 before co-founding and managing Journalism++ from 2011 to 2017. Nicolas is also one of the main contributors to the Data Journalism Handbook, the reference book for the popularization of data journalism worldwide.

/ Aleksi Knuutila

Author of the journalistic story on Finland

Aleksi Knuutila is an anthropologist and a data scientist who studies new forms of political culture, communities, and communication. He is interested in the application of interdisciplinary methods that combine interpretative, qualitative methods to the computational study of largescale digital data. Knuutila works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Propaganda Project.

/ Lenart J. Kučić

Author of the journalistic story and the research chapter on Slovenia

Lenart J. Kučić is a journalist, lecturer, and podcaster. He is a member of Pod črto, a non-profit and independent media collective specialized in investigative reporting, data journalism, and in-depth stories. He is a co-editor of the online magazine Disenz and a co-founder of the podcasting network, Marsowci. In addition, he is the author and coauthor of several books, expert articles, and studies on the subjects of media ownership and new media. His recent work focuses on computational propaganda, the use of algorithms, and the social impact of ICT’s.

/ Tuukka Lehtiniemi

Author of the research chapter on Finland

Tuukka Lehtiniemi is an economic sociologist and a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Consumer Society Research at the University of Helsinki. He is broadly interested in how the uses we invent for new technologies are shaped by how we imagine the economy to work. His current research focuses on the data economy and automated decision-making technologies. He previously worked at Aalto University, and, prior to that, in expert positions in the Finnish public sector. In 2018, he was a fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin. His work has been published in New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, and Surveillance & Society.

/ Nikolas Leontopoulos

Author of the journalistic story on Greece

Nikolas Leontopoulos is a Greek journalist based in Athens. He is the co-founder of Reporters United, a new center for investigative journalism that incorporates a network of reporters in Greece. For ten years, Nikolas worked for the Athens daily, Eleftherotypia. He collaborated with Reuters on investigations into Greek banking, shipping, and media, and he reported for the “Outlaw Ocean” New York Times series. During the Greek financial crisis, he worked as a fixer for several international media outlets, field-produced documentaries for VRPO, ARTE, and Al Jazeera, and he researched for ARD’s documentary “The Trail of the Troika”. He made two documentaries for VICE Greece: “The European Commission and the Defense Industry Lobby” and “The German Big Brother”. He was a co-founder of Investigate Europe, a consortium of European journalists publishing with media partners across Europe.

/ Katarina Lind

Author of the journalistic story on Sweden

Katarina Lind is a Swedish data journalist who worked with J++, an international team of data journalists, on the chapter about automating the welfare system in Sweden.

/ Maris Männiste

Author of the research chapter on Estonia

Maris Männiste is a media and communications PhD student and works as an information systems assistant at the Institute of Social Studies at the University of Tartu. Her research interests include the social consequences of big data and algorithms, perceptions of privacy, and datafication practices. Her recent research explores algorithmic governance ideals, where Estonian experts are considered to be a pioneer community engaged in the analysis and management of data and actively proposing novel data solutions.

/ Natalia Mileszyk

Author of the research chapter on Poland

Natalia Mileszyk is a lawyer, public policy expert, and head of digital and technology practice at CEC Government Relations, based in Warsaw. Previously, she was a public policy expert at Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation, a leading Polish think-anddo-tank, dealing with the social aspects of technology and the need for human-centered digital policy. Recently, this involved such issues as online platform regulations, AI, automated decision-making, and sharing economy regulations. She graduated from Warsaw University and Central European University in Budapest (LL.M.).

/ Lorenzo Palloni

Comic artist

Lorenzo Palloni is a cartoonist, the author of several graphic novels and webcomics, an award-winning writer, and one of the founders of comic artists collective, Mammaiuto. At the moment, he is working on forthcoming books for the French and Italian markets. Lorenzo is also a Scriptwriting and Storytelling teacher at La Scuola Internazionale di Comics di Reggio Emilia (International Comics School of Reggio Emilia).

/ Kristina Penner

Author of the EU chapter

Photo: Julia Bornkessel Kristina Penner is the executive advisor at AlgorithmWatch. Her research interests include ADM in social welfare systems, social scoring, and the societal impacts of ADM, as well as the sustainability of new technologies through a holistic lens. Her analysis of the EU border management system builds on her previous experience in research and counseling on asylum law. Further experience includes projects on the use of media in civil society and conflict-sensitive journalism, as well as stakeholder involvement in peace processes in the Philippines. She holds a master’s degree in international studies/peace and conflict research from Goethe University in Frankfurt.

/ Gerda Kelly Pill

Author of the journalistic story on Estonia

Gerda Kelly Pill is currently working in the ICT sector as a marketing and communications manager. Her job includes working with making complex topics understandable, communicating to an international audience, and bringing digitization to the construction, real estate, and facility management industries. Gerda is most passionate about information and media literacy, privacy, freedom of speech, and gender equality. She is currently in her second year of master’s studies in communications at the University of Tartu. Gerda intends to write her thesis on media literacy and media education in Estonia.

/ Alessio Ravazzani

Comic artist

Alessio Ravazzani is an editorial graphic designer, cartoonist, and illustrator who collaborates with the most prestigious comics and graphic novel publishers in Italy. He is an author with the Mammaiuto collective, of which he has been a member since its foundation.

/ Friederike Reinhold

Additional editing of the introduction and

policy recommendations

Photo: Julia Bornkessel As a senior policy advisor, Friederike Reinhold is responsible for advancing AlgorithmWatch’s policy and advocacy efforts. Prior to joining AlgorithmWatch, she worked as a Humanitarian Policy Advisor at the German Federal Foreign Office, with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Iran, with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Afghanistan, and at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

/ Minna Ruckenstein

Author of the research chapter on Finland

Minna Ruckenstein is an associate professor at the Consumer Society Research Centre and the Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki. She directs a research group that explores economic, social, emotional, and imaginary aspects of algorithmic systems and processes of datafication. Recently projects have focused on algorithmic culture and rehumanizing automated decision-making. The disciplines of anthropology, science and technology, economic sociology, and consumer research underpin her work. Minna has been published widely in respected international journals, including Big Data & Society, New Media & Society, and Social Science & Medicine. Prior to her academic work, she was a journalist and an independent consultant, and this professional experience has shaped the way she works, in a participatory manner with stakeholders involved. Her most recent collaborative projects have explored practices of content moderation and data activism.

/ Eduardo Santos

Author of the research chapter on Portugal

Eduardo Santos is a Lisbon-based lawyer. He graduated from the faculty of law at the University of Lisbon, and he is a co-founder, and the current president, of D3 - Defesa dos Direitos Digitais, the Portuguese Digital Rights Association, part of the European Digital Rights (EDRi) association. Eduardo’s work at D3 focuses on tech policy, advocacy, and lobbying related to digital rights issues including, privacy, net neutrality, data retention, video surveillance, copyright, and regulation of platforms both at a local and a European level. He has also contributed to research projects within the areas of law and technology and has been an active civil society representative on international Internet governance fora such as IGF and EuroDIG.

/ Paula Simões

Author of the journalistic story on Portugal

Paula Simões has a degree in journalism and is currently doing her PhD in digital humanities. She is an active member of ANSOL, the Portuguese National Association for Free Software, and she is also an active member of D3, the Portuguese Digital Rights Association. She was also president of AEL, an association that promoted F/LOSS, Creative Commons, Public Domain, and Open Access in education and scientific research, and she has been writing about these themes for more than a decade.

/ Matthias Spielkamp

Editor

Matthias Spielkamp is co-founder and executive director of AlgorithmWatch. He has testified before several committees of the German Bundestag on AI and automation. Matthias serves on the governing board of the German section of Reporters Without Borders and the advisory councils of Stiftung Warentest and the Whistleblower Network. He was a fellow of ZEIT Stiftung, Stiftung Mercator, and the American Council on Germany. Matthias founded the online magazine mobilsicher.de, reporting on the security of mobile devices, with an audience of more than 170,000 readers monthly. He has written and edited books on digital journalism and Internet governance and was named one of 15 architects building the data-driven future by Silicon Republic. He holds master’s degrees in journalism from the University of Colorado in Boulder and in philosophy from the Free University of Berlin.

/ Beate Stangl

Graphic designer and layout artist

Beate Stangl is a qualified designer and she works in Berlin on editorial design projects for beworx, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Buske Verlag, UNESCO Welterbe Deutschland e.V., Sehstern Agency, iRights Lab, and Landesspracheninstitut Bochum.

/ Konrad Szczygieł

Author of the journalistic story on Poland

Konrad Szczygieł is a Polish journalist working with Reporters Foundation (Fundacja Reporterów) and VSquare.org. He is a former investigative reporter at OKO. press and Superwizjer TVN. In 2016, and 2018, he was shortlisted for the Grand Press award. Konrad is based in Warsaw.

/ Gabriela Taranu

Author of the research chapter on Sweden

Gabriela Taranu is a Romanian marketing specialist based in Sweden and interested in social media and digital communication. She studied communication and public relations at the University of Bucharest before completing a master’s degree in media, communication and cultural analysis at Södertörn University. Her studies focussed on the Korean music industry and its influence upon different demographics to analyze trends in popular culture and how they connect with consumers through social media and marketing campaigns. After finishing her studies, Gabriela worked in digital marketing and social media at a tech startup to improve communication channels and create strong relations between the product and its users.

/ Alek Tarkowski

Author of the research chapter on Poland

Alek Tarkowski is a sociologist, digital rights activist, and strategist. He is cofounder and president of Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation, a think-and-do tank. His work focuses on strategies and public policies through which digital technologies serve openness, collaboration, and engagement. Recently, he has also focused on the social and cultural dimensions of the latest phase of technological change. Alek is a board member of Creative Commons, founder of Creative Commons Poland, and co-founder of Communia, a European advocacy association supporting the digital public domain. He is an alumnus of New Europe Challenger 2016 and Leadership Academy of Poland (class of 2017), a member of the Steering Committee of the Internet Governance Forum Poland, a former member of the Polish Board of Digitization (an advisory body to the Minister of Digitization), and a member of the Board of Strategic Advisors to the Prime Minister of Poland.

/ Marc Thümmler

Publications coordinator

Photo: Julia Bornkessel Marc Thümmler is in charge of public relations and outreach at AlgorithmWatch. He has a master’s degree in media studies, has worked as a producer and editor in a film company, and managed projects for the Deutsche Kinemathek and the civil society organization Gesicht Zeigen. In addition to his core tasks at AlgorithmWatch, Marc has been involved in the crowdfunding and crowdsourcing campaign OpenSCHUFA, and he coordinated the first issue of the Automating Society report, published in 2019.

/ Koen Vervloesem

Author of the journalistic stories on Belgium and the Netherlands

Koen Vervloesem is a Belgian freelance journalist. He holds master’s degrees in engineering (computer science) and in philosophy. He has been writing about artificial intelligence, programming, privacy, computer security, Linux, opensource, and the Internet of Things for more than 20 years.

/ Leo Wallentin

Author of the journalistic story on Sweden

Photo: Sara Mac Key Leo Wallentin is a Swedish data journalist and CEO at J++ Stockholm, a consultancy agency doing data-driven research, storytelling, and training for newsrooms. Leo has spent the last decade specializing in data-driven and data-critical journalism.

/ Louisa Well

Author of the research chapter on Germany

Louisa Well is a policy advisor to Dr. Anna Christmann, MdB, who is Spokeswoman for Innovation and Technology Policy of the parliamentary group Alliance 90/The Greens at the German Bundestag. In this position, Louisa works on policies in AI and digitization. She received a master’s degree in science on the subject of science and technology in society from the University of Edinburgh and a Bachelor of Arts in political science and English literature from the University of Heidelberg. For her master’s thesis — on the question of whether automation fosters discrimination in the automated distribution of unemployment benefits in Germany — she did a research placement with AlgorithmWatch.

/ Tom Wills

Author of the research chapter on the

United Kingdom

Tom Wills is a freelance data journalist and researcher based in Berlin. His specialty is using computational techniques for journalistic research and analysis — a type of data journalism. Previously, he led the data journalism team at The Times of London, using computational techniques to drive investigations on topics ranging from Westminster politics to the gender pay gap. Using tools such as the Python coding language to design algorithms for the purposes of public interest journalism has given him an insight into the perils of automation. He has also reported on the consequences of data-driven decision-making, including a major investigation into the World-Check bank screening database which resulted in stories published in six countries as part of an international collaboration. Tom graduated from City University, London with a master’s degree in investigative journalism in 2012.

ORGANISATIONS

/ AlgorithmWatch

AlgorithmWatch is a non-profit research and advocacy organization that is committed to watch, unpack and analyze algorithmic / automated decision-making (ADM) systems and their impact on society. While the prudent use of ADM systems can benefit individuals and communities, they come with great risks. In order to protect human autonomy and fundamental rights and maximize the public good, we consider it crucial to hold ADM systems accountable to democratic control. Use of ADM systems that significantly affect individuals' and collective rights must not only be made public in clear and accessible ways, individuals must also be able to understand how decisions are reached and to contest them if necessary. Therefore, we enable citizens to better understand ADM systems and develop ways to achieve democratic governance of these processes – with a mix of technologies, regulation, and suitable oversight institutions. With this, we strive to contribute to a fair and inclusive society and to maximize the benefit of ADM systems for society at large.

https://algorithmwatch.org/en/

/ Bertelsmann Stiftung

The Bertelsmann Stiftung works to promote social inclusion for everyone. It is committed to advancing this goal through programmes aimed at improving education, shaping democracy, advancing society, promoting health, vitalizing culture and strengthening economies. Through its activities, the Stiftung aims to encourage citizens to contribute to the common good. Founded in 1977 by Reinhard Mohn, the non-profit foundation holds the majority of shares in the Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA. The Bertelsmann Stiftung is a non-partisan, private operating foundation. With its “Ethics of Algorithms“ project, the Bertelsmann Stiftung is taking a close look at the consequences of algorithmic decision-making in society with the goal of ensuring that these systems are used to serve society. The aim is to help inform and advance algorithmic systems that facilitate greater social inclusion. This involves committing to what is best for a society rather than what’s technically possible – so that machine-informed decisions can best serve humankind.

https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en