Newest publications
How many people use alternative media in Germany and how can we measure it?
(2024) Klawier, Tilman
Digital media are often assumed to facilitate the production and spread of alternative news outlets. So far, however, it is quite unclear whether exposure to alternative media is a mass or a niche phenomenon. Although several studies attempted to measure alternative media use, these come to very different results. The present article aims to answer the general question of which methods measure alternative media exposure most accurately in order to approximate the number of alternative media users for the case of Germany. For this purpose, the study compares aggregate data from 27 studies comprising 34 measurements of alternative media exposure that were taken between 2015 and 2022. Moreover, the data analysis is complemented with a review of pertinent methodological literature. The study shows that although tracking measures do not capture all types of online media use, they do not appear to underestimate the number of alternative media users when compared to benchmark traffic data. From various self-report measures, those using lists of outlets with binary response options show the most similar results to tracking studies and the lowest levels of over-reporting. It is concluded that between 7% and 17% of Germans have at least sporadic contact with alternative media, while the number of weekly users is smaller and ranges between 2% and 4%. The share likely fluctuates over time in conjunction with current political events and developments. However, the data suggest that the alternative media audience did not grow over the past years. The article ends with a discussion of the potential impact of alternative media on society.
HCI driving alienation: autonomy and involvement as blind spots in digital ethics
(2024) Jungtäubl, Marc; Zirnig, Christopher; Ruiner, Caroline
The ongoing development and adoption of digital technologies such as AI in business brings ethical concerns and challenges. Main topics are the design of digital technologies, their tasks, and competencies in organizational practice, and their collaboration with humans. Previous guidelines on digital ethics mainly consider technological aspects such as the nondiscriminatory design of AI, its transparency, and technically constrained (distributed) agency as priorities in AI systems, leaving the consideration of the human factor and the implementation of ethical guidelines in organizational practice unclear. We analyze the relationship between human–computer interaction (HCI), autonomy, and worker involvement with its impact on the experience of alienation at work for workers. We argue that the consideration of autonomy and worker involvement is crucial for HCI. Based on a quantitative empirical study of 1989 workers in Germany, the analysis shows that when worker involvement is high, the effect of HCI use on alienation decreases. The study results contribute to the understanding of the use of digital technologies with regard to worker involvement, reveal a blind spot in widespread ethical debates about AI, and have practical implications with regard to digital ethics in organizational practice.
Dynamic modulation of the processing of unpredicted technical errors by the posterior cingulate and the default mode network
(2024) Wang, Zhiyan; Becker, Markus; Kondla, Gregor; Gimpel, Henner; Beer, Anton L.; Greenlee, Mark W.
The pervasive use of information technologies (IT) has tremendously benefited our daily lives. However, unpredicted technical breakdowns and errors can lead to the experience of stress, which has been termed technostress. It remains poorly understood how people dynamically respond to unpredicted system runtime errors occurring while interacting with the IT systems on a behavioral and neuronal level. To elucidate the mechanisms underlying such processes, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which 15 young adults solved arithmetic problems of three difficulty levels (easy, medium and hard) while two types of system runtime errors (problem errors and feedback errors) occurred in an unexpected manner. The problem error condition consisted of apparently defective displays of the arithmetic problem and the feedback error condition involved erroneous feedback. We found that the problem errors positively influenced participants’ problem-solving performance at the high difficulty level (i.e., hard tasks) at the initial stage of the session, while feedback errors disturbed their performance. These dynamic behavioral changes are mainly associated with brain activation changes in the posterior cingulate and the default mode network, including the posterior cingulate cortex, the mPFC, the retrosplenial cortex and the parahippocampal gyrus. Our study illustrates the regulatory role of the posterior cingulate in coping with unpredicted errors as well as with dynamic changes in the environment.
Public agreement with misinformation about wind farms
(2024) Winter, Kevin; Hornsey, Matthew J.; Pummerer, Lotte; Sassenberg, Kai
Misinformation campaigns target wind farms, but levels of agreement with this misinformation among the broader public are unclear. Across six nationally quota-based samples in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia (total N = 6008), over a quarter of respondents agree with half or more of contrarian claims about wind farms. Agreement with diverse claims is highly correlated, suggesting an underlying belief system directed at wind farm rejection. Consistent with this, agreement is best predicted (positively) by a conspiracist worldview (i.e., the general tendency to believe in conspiracy theories; explained variance Δ R² = 0.11–0.20) and (negatively) by a pro-ecological worldview (Δ R² = 0.04–0.13). Exploratory analyses show that agreement with contrarian claims is associated with lower support for pro-wind policies and greater intentions to protest against wind farms. We conclude that wind farm contrarianism is a mainstream phenomenon, rooted in people’s worldviews and that poses a challenge for communicators and institutions committed to accelerating the energy transition.
Die Erweiterung des genetischen Codes als molekulare Prozesskontrolle
(2025) Hiller, Eric; Hermann, Alexander; Lilge, Lars
Bioproduction of bioactive compounds on a large-scale poses challenges that require molecular strain engineering. By integrating the principle of genetic code expansion (GCE), the biosynthesis of the surfactin biosurfactant has been controlled in the production host Bacillus subtilis depending on the supply of a defined non-canonical amino acid. The regulation of this molecular process control has been transferred to high-cell-density fed-batch bioreactor procedures, allowing an initial upscaling.