MSC scholar Frederik Schade gains his PhD degree

How do we deal with questions concerning moral responsibility in increasingly digitalized societies? What do we understand by “digital responsibility” altogether? These are key questions addressed and interrogated by Frederik Schade in his Ph.D. thesis entitled The Question of Digital Responsibility: An Ethnography of Emergent Institutional Formations in the Contemporary Governance of Technology.

The thesis was successfully defended on March 15th, 2024, and subsequently published in CBS’ online archive.

For his thesis, Frederik conducted a 14 month long ethnographic study of two select organizations in Denmark that both deal with

technological governance: the Danish data protection agency (enforcing GDPR in Denmark) and a private labelling initiative called the D-seal.

By investigating and comparing the daily practices of these organizations, the thesis analyzes two distinct forms of “responsibilization” at stake in the context of digitalization (one juridical, the other economic) and their interrelations. We learn that while recent legislation like GDPR seems to have had a significant impact on what we tend to think of as the moral content of “responsibility,” there is an increasing tendency towards market-oriented guidance mechanisms to help and support (rather than force) Danish organizations into legal compliance.

The thesis can be accessed and downloaded via this link. For further information about the project, please contact Frederik Schade, fsc.msc@cbs.dk.