Mag.a Dr.in Katja Mayer

Senior Post Doc

(Elise Richter Fellowship FWF)

The Politics of Openness

Tel: +43-1-4277-49612
eMail: katja.mayer@univie.ac.at

Biography

Katja Mayer is a sociologist and works at the interface of science, technology and society. Since 2019, she is working as senior postdoc with the Elise Richter Fellowship (FWF) at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on the interaction between social science methods and their public spheres.

As part of her postdoc position at the Professorship of Computational Social Science and Big Data, she researched and taught in the field of "Critical Data Studies" at TU Munich.

Her focus is on the cultural, ethical and socio-technical challenges at the interface of computer science, social sciences and society. Data is treated less as a new raw material, but as a highly variable and fragile phenomenon. In the context of data-driven decision-making, data are not considered as "given", but the way we collect, transform, analyze, and trust data is up for discussion.

In addition, Katja also works as Senior Scientist at the Center for Social Innovation in Vienna and is an Associate Researcher at the University of Vienna's platform "Responsible Research and Innovation in Scientific Practice". For many years she has been teaching Sociology, STS and Web Sciences at the University of Vienna, the Danube University Krems, the University of Art and Design Linz and the University of Lucerne. She was a visiting fellow at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (USA). She is a member of the core team of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA) and co-heads the working group "National Strategy for the Transition to Open Science". In the years 2011-2013 she was a research fellow of the President of the European Research Council (ERC).

Publications

Hacking Humans?

Author(s)
Nina Klimburg-Witjes, Alexander Wentland
Abstract

Today, social engineering techniques are the most common way of committing cybercrimes through the intrusion and infection of computer systems. Cybersecurity experts use the term "social engineering" to highlight the "human factor" in digitized systems, as social engineering attacks aim at manipulating people to reveal sensitive information. In this paper, we explore how discursive framings of individual versus collective security by cybersecurity experts redefine roles and responsibilities at the digitalized workplace. We will first show how the rhetorical figure of the deficient user is constructed vis-a-vis notions of (in)security in social engineering discourses. Second, we will investigate the normative tensions that these practices create. To do so, we link work in science and technology studies on the politics of deficit construction to recent work in critical security studies on securitization and resilience. Empirically, our analysis builds on a multi-sited conference ethnography during three cybersecurity conferences as well as an extensive document analysis. Our findings suggest a redistribution of institutional responsibility to the individual user through three distinct social engineering story lines-"the oblivious employee," "speaking code and social," and "fixing human flaws." Finally, we propose to open up the discourse on social engineering and its inscribed politics of deficit construction and securitization and advocate for companies and policy makers to establish and foster a culture of collective cyber in/security and corporate responsibility.

Organisation(s)
Department of Science and Technology Studies
External organisation(s)
Technische Universität München
Journal
Science, Technology & Human Values
Volume
46
Pages
1316–1339
No. of pages
24
ISSN
0162-2439
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243921992844
Publication date
2021
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
509017 Social studies of science, 509025 Technology studies, 509024 Security research
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Anthropology, Economics and Econometrics, Philosophy, Human-Computer Interaction, Social Sciences (miscellaneous), Sociology and Political Science
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/hacking-humans(4594bede-b56f-4b86-80ef-0d86b787587b).html