Sociotechnical Systems

Research in the field of Sociotechnical Systems is concerned with how people in groups, networks, organizations, and societies use and can use information and communication technologies, and how interactions in such social contexts can be analyzed using appropriate methods. This includes software solutions for supporting planning processes, organizing interactive forms of civic participation, supporting social and economic relationships, agent-based modeling of collective action, and supporting learning processes in both school and out-of-school contexts. Researchers in this field also develop methods for analyzing and visualizing of social interactions as well as formal and informal structures within organizations based on digital information. 

Research problems in this field originate, among other areas, from the social and economic sciences. The field addresses topics such as the technological organization of complex planning and decision-making processes in politics and public administration (including the interactive participation of citizens through information and communication technologies); the detection of latent interaction patterns in political parties and parliaments; social relationships and communication on the internet; the effects of social media on traditional communication patterns and online mobilization processes; visual communication in the internet; intra- and interorganizational relationships in corporate management, knowledge networks and interorganizational alliance management; the effects of social media on economic processes and behavior; the actions of individuals and organizations in online environments; the regulation of social networks and, in particular, cyber-physical systems in "digitized production"; as well as technology-oriented methods for occupational competence assessment. Methodologically, agent-based modeling of voting and decision-making processes and social network analysis are the key areas of focus.

The working group’s current focus (as of 2026) is on artificial intelligence in democracy, election campaigns and public administration: topics include the use of generative AI in political campaigns, the adaptation of language models for authoritarian propaganda, public attitudes towards the use of AI by state institutions, AI-supported deliberation, and the effects of disinformation on epistemic systems. Methodologically, the group combines computational social science – in particular quantitative text analysis and language models in parliamentary and electoral research – with comparative politics and social policy research. With the new members admitted in 2026, the social-science side of the working group has grown considerably.

• Political Science, esp. Digital Transformation: Prof. Dr. Andreas Jungherr
• Political Sociology: Prof. Dr. Sabrina Mayer, Dr. Verena Benoît
• Empirical Political Science: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Sieberer, Dr. Alexander Herzog
• Political Science, esp. Policy Analysis: Prof. Dr. Carina Schmitt
• Political Theory: Prof. Dr. Johannes Marx
• Comparative Politics: Prof. Dr. Thomas Saalfeld
• Fundamentals of Natural Language Processing: Prof. Dr. Roman Klinger
• Information Systems, esp. Health and Society in the Digital Age: Prof. Dr. Christian Maier
• Information Systems, esp. Social Networks: Prof. Dr. Kai Fischbach
• Multimodal Intelligent Interaction: Prof. Dr. Markus Rickert
• Trimberg Research Academy: Dr. Tamir Libel