Browsing by Subject "Public opinion"

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Not our kind of crowd! How partisan bias distorts perceptions of political bots on Twitter (now X)
(2025) Lüders, Adrian; Reiss, Stefan; Dinkelberg, Alejandro; MacCarron, Pádraig; Quayle, Michael
Social bots, employed to manipulate public opinion, pose a novel threat to digital societies. Existing bot research has emphasized technological aspects while neglecting psychological factors shaping human–bot interactions. This research addresses this gap within the context of the US‐American electorate. Two datasets provide evidence that partisanship distorts (a) online users' representation of bots, (b) their ability to identify them, and (c) their intentions to interact with them. Study 1 explores global bot perceptions on through survey data from N = 452 Twitter (now X) users. Results suggest that users tend to attribute bot‐related dangers to political adversaries, rather than recognizing bots as a shared threat to political discourse. Study 2 ( N = 619) evaluates the consequences of such misrepresentations for the quality of online interactions. In an online experiment, participants were asked to differentiate between human and bot profiles. Results indicate that partisan leanings explained systematic judgement errors. The same data suggest that participants aim to avoid interacting with bots. However, biased judgements may undermine this motivation in praxis. In sum, the presented findings underscore the importance of interdisciplinary strategies that consider technological and human factors to address the threats posed by bots in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Stakeholder perspectives on the contribution of digital technologies to improve the sustainability of fruit production – a case study on the Lake Constance region in Germany
(2024) Gaber, Kirsten; Bieling, Claudia
Fruit cultivation is facing numerous sustainability challenges including climate change, weather extremes, and societal pressures surrounding the use of agricultural inputs. The value of fruit cultivation extends beyond the production of food, as the places of production are regionally important for ecology, recreation, tourism, and socio-cultural values; thus, sustainability issues threaten not only the future production of fruit, but also the cultural landscape as such. Digitalization in agriculture is progressing at a rapid pace and is frequently heralded as a solution to the current pressures surrounding modern food production. Increased productivity, efficiency gains, and improved transparency along the food value chain, enabled through the implementation of digital technologies, may lead to environmental and socio-economic benefits. Meanwhile, a divide is growing between supporters of digitalization and skeptics who are concerned with the technologies and their short- and long-term impacts. Digital solutions are not always suitable across agricultural sectors and regions due to differences in crop management activities, land-use types (e.g. perennial crop area like orchards versus arable land area for temporary crops), and physical barriers and infrastructure. At the face of these challenges and the rapid development of digitalization, stakeholder perceptions regarding the influence of digitalization on the sustainability of fruit cultivation must be understood in order to enable a sustainable further development of digital technologies. Particular to the case study region of this dissertation, the Lake Constance region in southern Germany, research on stakeholder perspectives at the interface of sustainability in fruit production and digitalization does not exist. There is a large knowledge gap regarding the attitudes and practical understandings of the stakeholders impacted by the digital transformation of fruit cultivation, as well as what measures are required to support a more user-oriented development. Technology development without the consideration of barriers, user abilities, and user expectations may lead to an imbalanced transformation that may favour certain agricultural sectors, farm sizes, or production systems over others, which may consequently create a regional, demographic, and/or sectoral digital divide. To this end, this cumulative doctoral work sought to explore the knowledge and views of stakeholders regarding the contribution of digital technologies to improve the sustainability of fruit production by using an empirical and qualitative case-study approach within the setting of sustainability research. The case-study region was the Lake Constance region in Germany, characterized by organic and integrated production (IP) fruit production on small- to medium-sized family farms. This region is the second-largest fruit growing area in the country and plays a critical role in the regional, national, and international food supply. The research questions that have guided this doctoral thesis are as follows: (1) What is the state of the art on digital technologies in fruit production? (2) How do stakeholders perceive digitalized fruit production, adoption and barriers to adoption of the technologies, and do these perceptions differ based on production system or farm size? (3) Do farmers (and other stakeholders) believe that digital technologies can tackle the environmental and social/societal sustainability challenges of fruit production, in both conventional and organic production, and if yes, how? In order to answer these questions, the author comprehensively reviewed over 200 digital tools that can be used by farms in the context of fruit production and conducted a qualitative analysis of 34 interviews with stakeholders along the fruit value chain. The three research articles that form the basis of this cumulative dissertation synergistically answer these questions through the research findings and surrounding scientific literature-based discussions. Overall, the development of digital tools for this case study region appears to be unsuitable and knowledge on digitalization is uneven. Based on the findings, opportunities for technological development to overcome reported barriers and therefore support a user-oriented transformation include the development of tools that are cost-efficient, such as tools with multifunctionalities or that are hireable services, and that offer technical support in the local language. Marketing of technologies must be improved, as misguided marketing and inadequate information in the fruit sector may hinder implementation. Political frameworks should prioritize supporting the inclusion of small farms and equal efforts for development and implementation across production systems. The reduction of agricultural inputs and lack of societal acceptance of agriculture were the most frequently reported sustainability challenges for regional fruit production. Stakeholders believed both environmental and socio-economic challenges could be mitigated by digitalization in fruit production, particularly through increased efficiency and improved transparency. However, perceptions of digitalization’s chances and challenges varied among individuals, fruit production systems, and farm sizes. Furthermore, the majority of stakeholders believed that digitalization could change the public opinion about fruit production, either through on-farm use of the technologies or through improved transparency along the value chain. Both pathways were reported to potentially create positive or negative impacts; for instance, more transparency can lead to improved trust between farmers and consumers, but could also de-romanticize expectations or contradict the idea of naturalness in agriculture, especially in the case of organic farming. The discourse surrounding the use of digital technologies in fruit farming may be more influential on public opinion than their actual implementation. According to stakeholders in the Lake Constance region, digitalized technologies can be used as tools to mitigate urgent sustainability challenges in fruit cultivation, but are not a cure-all solution. These technologies must be considered with caution, as they also risk worsening sustainability issues, particularly related to power inequalities and the growth paradigm of greater productivity and efficiency. Therefore, a reprioritization of digitalization focusing on mitigating urgent sustainability issues is required. This should include the supported development and implementation of user-driven technological design, hybrid (human-technological) intelligence for fruit cultivation tasks, and tools that prioritize building trust towards farmers and maintaining their autonomy. Future transdisciplinary research approaches are encouraged in order to meet many of the provided recommendations from this dissertation, such as enabling collaborative technology- and research design, improving foundational knowledge of involved groups through capacity-building measures like trainings, and building trust between actor groups. The results of this work will inform policy makers, researchers, and technology developers to support the fruit production sector to overcome current and future sustainability issues and enable fair, informed participation in the digital transformation of agriculture.
VERZERRT. SCHRILL. GESPALTEN. Meinungsklima und Diskursqualität im Internet und ihre Wirkungen auf den Journalismus
(2022) Fulda, Stefanie; Schweiger, Wolfgang
Journalists play a dual role in shaping public opinion. On one hand, they influence public opinion through their publications. At the same time, they themselves continuously monitor public opinion and orient themselves to it. It seems obvious that the way journalists perceive the world can also influence their work. In fact, it has not yet been studied in terms of the perceived climate of opinion. It is similar with the perceived digital debate culture. Quality, tone and content of online discourses are already widely addressed under keywords such as incivility and hate speech. Effects on journalism are also mentioned, but they don´t focus on how journalists perceive the combined climate of opinion and quality of discourse and how this affects their work. In fact, user comments, individual opinions and opinion leaders are of particular importance to journalists in this perception. Due to the still incomplete state of research on the perception effects of public opinion and discourse quality on journalism, qualitative, guideline-supported interviews were therefore set up on the question "How do journalists perceive opinion climate and discourse quality on the Internet and how does this affect their work?" in order to approach the possible manifestations of this topic in an explorative manner. For these interviews, which lasted 1 - 1.5 hours, 20 journalists from all over Germany were interviewed. The net sample of participating journalists differed according to department, type of employment, age, location, gender, subject areas and degree of position, with the aim of obtaining answers from as many different journalists as possible and being able to compare the answers of certain groups with each other. In addition, a website was created as a central information point for the project. With the help of a repetitive change of perspective in the survey, which addresses the approach and considerations of the interviewees, but also inquires how, from the interviewees point of view, other journalists deal with the same issue, it was possible to identify some hidden perceptual effects. Beginning with the question about the central sources of public opinion perception, via processing and the mechanisms in this process, to the recognizable effects on journalistic work, it was thus possible to trace the path of perception of opinion climate and discourse quality to the effects on journalistic topic selection and topic processing. A key finding of the survey is that it remains unclear to the group of journalists surveyed whether the perceived climate of opinion on the Internet is representative of society as a whole - many do not rule out parallels of digital and general public opinion. At the same time, it is rationally clear to many journalists that they should not be too impressed by the experiences on the Net, since these represent only a small section of society, but emotionally it does happen - because the quality of the experienced, digital discourse is so impressive. On the other hand, almost all of the journalists surveyed assume that the perceived climate of opinion influences their journalistic work, but show a lack of clarity about the extent to which they are personally affected by this in their work. They do not know the concrete effects. Finally, it became obvious that journalists base their perception of public opinion quite significantly on the perceived quality of discourse. This is an understandable approach, but one that harbors the risk of misperceptions due to third person, negativity or false uniqueness effects, to name just a few of the most important potential distortions of perception. This has consequences: If those who report on public opinion are subject to a distorted perception, then they bring this into their reporting, which reinforces the tendency for recipients to also be subject to a distorted perception of public opinion. Citizens, in turn, express themselves in social media or below journalistic articles in the comments. These are read by editorial teams and in turn used for journalistic reporting. This is where the circle closes, because this is how recipients and journalists influence each others distorted perceptions and draw conclusions about public opinion in society. Minority opinions are perceived as majority opinions, the emotionally heated discourse on the Internet shapes the impression of a growing polarization of society, and journalism carries this idea into its reporting. The consequence is a possible misinterpretation of public opinion by journalistic media, so that journalism runs the risk of arguing past the actual public opinion of society through a distorted perception of public opinion and discourse quality on the Internet.