Frank Marcinkowski’s research while affiliated with Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and other places

BACKGROUND Societies worldwide have witnessed growing rifts separating advocates and opponents of vaccinations and other COVID-19 countermeasures. With the rollout of vaccination campaigns, the German-speaking DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), initially exhibited a noticeably low vaccination uptake compared to other European regions. Later, uptake increased. It remains unclear which factors contributed to these changes. OBJECTIVE This study aims to shed light on the intricacies of vaccine hesitancy among the German-speaking population and the possible dynamics between policy changes and public concerns using online discourse data. These insights are valuable for policy-makers tasked with making far-reaching decisions: policies need to effectively curb the spread of the virus and at the same time respect fundamental civic liberties and minimize undesired consequences. METHODS This study draws on data from X , formerly Twitter. We use a hybrid pipeline to detect and analyze 191,750 German vaccination-related tweets using a semi-automatic seed list generation approach, topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and a minimum of social scientific domain knowledge to analyze the discourse about vaccinations in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We further analyze the evolution of public attention during different phases of the pandemic and in relation to policy changes to identify potential drivers of shifts in public attention. RESULTS We find that skepticism regarding the severity of the COVID-19 virus, towards efficacy and safety of vaccines and other medical concerns were among the prevalent topics in the discourse on Twitter but that the most attention was given to debating the theme of freedom and civic liberties. During the later phases of the pandemic, policies were implemented that restricted the freedom of unvaccinated citizens. During these phases, increased vaccination uptake could be observed, and the attention increasingly shifted from medical and other concerns towards questions of freedom and civic liberties. Yet, increasingly negative and polarized sentiments were expressed. CONCLUSIONS Our analyses suggest potential interactions between policies, public attention to different topics and associated sentiments. While vaccination uptake increased, our findings indicate that citizens' doubts and concerns did not decrease. This study showcases the use of analyzing online discourse data for data-driven policy-making in highly dynamic contexts such as the COVID-19 pandemic where monitoring the discourse can serve to provide insights on suitable actions to properly and timely respond to citizens' concerns.

Societies worldwide have witnessed growing rifts separating advocates and opponents of vaccinations and other COVID-19 countermeasures. With the rollout of vaccination campaigns, German-speaking regions exhibited much lower vaccination uptake than other European regions. While Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (the DACH region) caught up over time, it remains unclear which factors contributed to these changes. Scrutinizing public discourses can help shed light on the intricacies of vaccine hesitancy and inform policy-makers tasked with making far-reaching decisions: policies need to effectively curb the spread of the virus while respecting fundamental civic liberties and minimizing undesired consequences. This study draws on Twitter data to analyze the topics prevalent in the public discourse. It further maps the topics to different phases of the pandemic and policy changes to identify potential drivers of change in public attention. We use a hybrid pipeline to detect and analyze vaccination-related tweets using topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and a minimum of social scientific domain knowledge to analyze the discourse about vaccinations in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic in the DACH region. We show that skepticism regarding the severity of the COVID-19 virus and towards efficacy and safety of vaccines were among the prevalent topics in the discourse on Twitter but that the most attention was given to debating the theme of freedom and civic liberties. Especially during later phases of the pandemic, when implemented policies restricted the freedom of unvaccinated citizens, increased vaccination uptake could be observed. At the same time, increasingly negative and polarized sentiments emerge in the discourse. This suggests that these policies might have effectively attenuated vaccination hesitancy but were not successfully dispersing citizens' doubts and concerns.

The rise of populism in Western Europe is often portrayed as a reaction to globalisation and supra-national integration processes. However, the domestic-international divide is only one aspect of the scalar organisation of government. In this article, we explore the relationship between populist attitudes and orientations towards state scales more generally. Drawing on a representative survey of 4033 citizens in Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland, we show that populist attitudes are linked to preferences for those state territories viewed as ‘closer to the people’ not only in a metaphorical but also in a scalar sense. The results suggest that the rise of populism should not only be considered a response to a crisis of party government in a context of globalisation but also as a response to a crisis of national statehood.

Artificial intelligence in higher education is becoming more prevalent as it promises improvements and acceleration of administrative processes concerning student support, aiming for increasing student success and graduation rates. For instance, Academic Performance Prediction (APP) provides individual feedback and serves as the foundation for distributing student support measures. However, the use of APP with all its challenges (e.g., inherent biases) significantly impacts the future prospects of young adults. Therefore, it is important to weigh the opportunities and risks of such systems carefully and involve affected students in the development phase. This study addresses students’ fairness perceptions of the distribution of support measures based on an APP system. First, we examine how students evaluate three different distributive justice norms, namely, equality, equity, and need. Second, we investigate whether fairness perceptions differ between APP based on human or algorithmic decision-making, and third, we address whether evaluations differ between students studying science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or social sciences, humanities, and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE), respectively. To this end, we conducted a cross-sectional survey with a 2 ×$\times$ 3 factorial design among n = 1378 German students, in which we utilized the distinct distribution norms and decision-making agents as design factors. Our findings suggest that students prefer an equality-based distribution of support measures, and this preference is not influenced by whether APP is based on human or algorithmic decision-making. Moreover, the field of study does not influence the fairness perception, except that students of STEM subjects evaluate a distribution based on the need norm as more fair than students of SHAPE subjects. Based on these findings, higher education institutions should prioritize student-centric decisions when considering APP, weigh the actual need against potential risks, and establish continuous feedback through ongoing consultation with all stakeholders.

Klimaerwärmung, Verlust der Biodiversität, Energie- und Verkehrswende, globaler Wettbewerbsdruck: Ohne den flächendeckenden Einsatz neuer Technologien werden sich die großen Herausforderungen unserer Zeit nicht bewältigen lassen. Doch der dafür benötigte technologische Wandel gerät ins Stocken, wenn er für die betroffenen Menschen nicht überzeugend oder attraktiv für ihr Leben erscheint. Dann fehlt am Ende der gesellschaftliche Rückhalt, der in demokratischen Gesellschaften Voraussetzung für Transformationen hin zu nachhaltigem Wandel von Technik und Gesellschaft ist. Was aber braucht es, um diesen Rückhalt in Zivilgesellschaft und Bürgerschaft zu finden? Welche Kommunikations-, Teilhabe- und Beteiligungsformen eignen sich für die gemeinsame Gestaltung des technologischen Wandels? Und mit welchen Formaten lässt sich den wirkmächtigen Verschwörungstheorien und Fake News erfolgreich begegnen? Der vorliegende Band vereint anerkannte Expert:innen aus verschiedenen Fachdisziplinen, bündelt den aktuellen Stand des Wissens, vermittelt evidenzbasierte Einsichten in die psychologischen, sozialen und kommunikativen Bedingungen gelingender Technikkommunikation und gibt konkrete Impulse für die Praxis. Die Beiträge richten sich an Politik und Behörden, Kommunikationsdienstleister und Unternehmen sowie an all jene, die sich im öffentlichen Technologie- und Technikdiskurs engagieren wollen.

There is increasing interest in studying science communication from an institutional point of view. With much of the empirical research focusing on views of institutional actors on communication and their roles in the organisation, less attention has been paid to practices and dispositions of universities to communicate their research with publics. Universities have professionalised communication structures for external relations, and science communication has been absorbed in this. Yet, the evidence on what those practices represent for the university—at different levels of the organisation—is insufficient to understand the role of science communication within the university landscape. This study investigates science communication at central offices of research universities. Sampling whole populations of universities in four European countries (Germany, Italy, Portugal, and the United Kingdom; 44% response rate), we disentangle practices of communication as a centralised function. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first cross-national study on this topic based on all universities within the surveyed countries. We compare general trends in science communication of universities across countries. The evidence shows that science communication is a secondary function at central offices of universities, strongly medialised, and points to a supporting role for central structures in facilitating science communication at other levels while moving away from doing it themselves. Universities might need to consider their long-term positioning in enhancing national science culture by fostering science communication through models of dialogue and public debate.

This article offers a view on the emerging practice of managing external relations of the modern university, and the role of science communication in this. With a representative sample of research universities in four countries, we seek to broaden our understanding of the science communication (SC) function and its niche within the modern university. We distinguish science communication from corporate communication functions and examine how they distribute across organisational levels. We find that communication functions can be represented along a spectrum of (de)centralisation: public relations and marketing activities are more likely carried out at the central level (central offices), and public affairs and SC activities are more likely carried out at decentral levels (e.g. in specific offices and/or research institutes, departments). This study shows that little attention is paid to science communication at central structures, suggesting that it is not a practice that aligns easily with university corporate communication, yet SC might find its niche increasingly in decentral locations of activity.

Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence. A topic analysis of German media coverage on artificial intelligence. German media coverage of AI breaks down into 25 topics. While these are broad, an economic perspective on AI dominates. The thematic focus differs between media genres. In addition, the reporting is strongly occasion-driven.

Algorithmic decision-making increasingly shapes people's daily lives. Given that such autonomous systems can cause severe harm to individuals and social groups, fairness concerns have arisen. A human-centric approach demanded by scholars and policymakers requires considering people's fairness perceptions when designing and implementing algorith-mic decision-making. We provide a comprehensive, systematic literature review synthesizing the existing empirical insights on perceptions of algorithmic fairness from 58 empirical studies spanning multiple domains and scientific disciplines. Through thorough coding, we systemize the current empirical literature along four dimensions: (1) algorithmic predictors, (2) human predictors, (3) comparative effects (human decision-making vs. algorithmic decision-making), and (4) consequences of algorithmic decision-making. While we identify much heterogeneity around the theoretical concepts and empirical measurements of algorithmic fairness, the insights come almost exclusively from Western-democratic contexts. By advocating for more interdisciplinary research adopting a society-in-the-loop framework, we hope our work will contribute to fairer and more responsible algorithmic decision-making.