Karoline Helbig is a Senior Researcher at Power for Democracies, where she currently co-leads the project Effectively Countering the Authoritarian Playbook, and a Visiting Researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center’s research group Politics of Digitalization. Her main areas of expertise are in the intersection of deliberative democracy and digital technologies and in the spread of authoritarianism across the world. She is currently working on a monograph based on her Ph.D. thesis, in which she analyzes how deliberative systems are influenced by digital technologies. Karoline has a background in sociology, political theory, and mathematics, with a Ph.D. in sociology from Leibniz University Hannover as well as an M.A. in sociology and a B.A. in sociology and mathematics from Friedrich Schiller University Jena. From 2018 to 2023, she was a doctoral researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society (The German Internet Institute) and the WZB.
Project: Protecting Democracy in the Digital Age: Mapping the Landscape of Threats and Response Strategies - Democratic backsliding has been documented in many states around the world. Some of the authoritarian threats to liberal democracy are mediated by digital technologies and amplified by the rapid advances in AI. We aim to make a contribution to the containment of these threats. Accordingly, our guiding questions are as follows: (1) What are the most serious threats liberal democracies are facing in connection with the development and deployment of AI technologies? And (2), what are the most effective short- and long-term strategies that activists, policy-makers, and philanthropists can pursue to counter the respective threats? To address these questions, we draw on analyses of AI development and deployment, qualitative and quantitative research in political science, political sociology, and political economy, practical knowledge from civil society organizations, and normative moral and political theory. Ultimately, we aim to produce strategic and tactical recommendations that practitioners may use in deciding how to best allocate their limited resources. The project is funded by Power for Democracies, a nonprofit evaluator for civil society initiatives supporting liberal democracies around the world.