Aktuelle Publikationen

Auf dieser Seite finden Sie die chronologisch geordneten Veröffentlichungen unserer Wissenschaftler*innen aus den vergangenen Jahren.

Aktuelle Publikationen (Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaft)

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  • (2023): For the climate, my friends, or my region? : An experimental field trial for prosumer engagement with peer-to-peer energy trading in Austria Energy Research & Social Science. Elsevier. 2023, 97, 103000. ISSN 2214-6296. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.erss.2023.103000

    For the climate, my friends, or my region? : An experimental field trial for prosumer engagement with peer-to-peer energy trading in Austria

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    Collective, citizen-led approaches to energy systems are key to reducing humanity's climate impact. Crucial for their success is the engagement of energy prosumers, i.e., citizens that produce energy. This paper investigates how to best activate the identities of prosumers to participate in peer-to-peer energy trading. In collaboration with the OurPower cooperative in Austria, an experimental trial was set up: 8713 households equipped with photovoltaic systems were randomly selected to receive one of three postcards. Postcards appealed to different identities, using as slogan “your climate. your electricity” or “your friends. your electricity” or “your region. your electricity”. The postcards were designed to encourage prosumers to visit the OurPower webpage and register via a link and QR code to trade their energy. For our main dependent variable, the unique webpage visits, we recorded a 3.1 % response rate (N = 271 visitors out of 8713 recipients) and found that while the social identity framings (region and peer-group) did not significantly differ in response rates, they both outperformed the individual climate identity framing. For click-through to express more interest (N = 73 out of 271 visitors), the region framing was more successful than the peer-group framing, but not the climate framing. For length of stay on the website (N = 145 visitors), regional framing (Mr = 73.5 s) held an advantage over the other two (Mclimate = 22.9 s; Mfriends = 17.5 s). Together, the results demonstrate that putting regional focus into the spotlight could be a promising consideration for future energy-related campaigns and interventions.

  • (2023): Reaction to poor performers in task groups : a model of pro-group intent Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. American Psychological Association. 2023, 124(1), pp. 123-144. ISSN 0022-3514. eISSN 1939-1315. Available under: doi: 10.1037/pspi0000396

    Reaction to poor performers in task groups : a model of pro-group intent

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    How do task groups react to poor performers? We integrate attribution theory with individual motivation theories in a novel, parsimonious model that makes nuanced predictions. Our model asserts that group members assess the poor performer's intent to help the group (i.e., pro-group intent) by first considering the poor performer's characteristics suggested by attribution theory: effort and ability. While attribution theorists have mainly assumed that low effort reflects lacking desire to contribute to group goals and that it is infeasible to acquire ability, motivation theories assume individuals set their goals to perform tasks and acquire skills based on both desirability (value) and feasibility (expectancy). As group members may well assume that a poor performer uses these criteria when forming a pro-group intent to contribute to group goals, low effort may also reflect the infeasibility of making the required contributions, and low ability may reflect a low desire to acquire new skills. Therefore, our model of pro-group intent predicts that desirability-feasibility assumptions moderate the effort-ability effect on reactions to poor performers and that evaluations of pro-group intent mediate this effect. Indeed, in five experiments (total N = 1,011), low effort only produced more negative reactions than low ability when a desirability attribution was made for effort, and a feasibility attribution was made for ability. In contrast, reversing these assumptions eliminated the effort-ability effect. This interaction was fully mediated by the performer's perceived pro-group intent. We discuss how our (meta-) intentional perspective informs existing accounts of poor performers, group processes, and motivation science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

  • Digital Adaptation in Autocracies

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    In recent years, the world has witnessed drastic changes to information and communication technologies, ranging from the emergence of digital communication tools in previously disconnected areas to the permanent development of even more sophisticated tools. To this day, nearly half of the global population is connected to the World Wide Web, making the exchange of information and communication accessible and attainable to most parts of the world. These rapid changes have forever changed the way in which political actors communicate with one another, allowing not only for new possibilities on how information travels, but also how these channels can be restricted or manipulated to meet strategical goals. In sum, exerting control over the digital space manifests power over communication flows and political actors have a strong interest to defend their political stance in the digital environment. In this dissertation, I address the ability of political actors in authoritarian regimes to adapt to such substantial changes to communication in order to sustain in a world that has become increasingly more digitized.



    In the first paper, I address the use of repressive tools both on the ground and in the digital space in order to silence domestic dissent. Previously, research has exclusively looked at non-digital or digital repression separately and it remains puzzling under which circumstances either one of these options is preferred. I argue that authoritarian leaders are not only influenced by domestic factors but that international pressure influences the decision-making process whether to repress the public physically or digitally. As digital repression is less incisive, visible and harmful than physical suppression, I argue that the autocrat will trend towards repression in the digital space when international dependencies are high. Therefore, I examine the use of physical violence, Internet outages and online censorship as a response to domestic protest when international linkages are high. Relying on event data and fine-grained Internet measurement data, I find that digital repression, and in particular content filtering, is increasingly present during protest events when political alliances with other democratic countries are built, but not when investments appear at stake.



    In the second project, I outline how digital repression, in particular Internet shutdowns, are evaluated by the broader public. Deprivation caused by a halt in Internet services can stir anger and frustration among citizens, who would have any reason to evaluate their government as less positive in the aftermath of an Internet shutdown. Why is it then that the government orders such incisive measures when a harsh backlash from the population can be expected? By using survey data from the Afrobarometer in combination with data on Internet outages, I do not find that citizens have a lower evaluation of their government in the aftermath of an Internet shutdown. This might be caused by a lack of awareness to associate the incidence to state repression, or that actions are justified for the greater good. This finding implies for the autocrat that the implementation of a sudden halt in Internet services is most likely not to cause a backlash effect and can be imposed upon the public when necessary.



    In the third paper, written together with Nils B. Weidmann, we examine in how far citizens are able to adapt digitally to contentious situations on the ground. During protest events, citizens might divert to anonymity-preserving technologies like \textit{The Onion Router} to circumvent online censorship and surveillance. In this study, we use protest data and data on the Tor network in combination. The results show that Tor usage increases after a series of protest events, and that this relationship is more pronounced in countries with social media censorship.




    In sum, this dissertation shows that in today's world authoritarian figures, who tend to be in asymmetric control over the Internet, are capable of adapting to rapid changes to the digital infrastructure by using it to their own advantage. Novel digital repressive tactics allow for less incisive and visible ways to silence protests when international dependencies are at stake. Moreover, the implementation of Internet shutdowns does not create a potential backlash from the public, making it a powerful tool to control information access and diffusion. However, not only authoritarian regimes have adapted to the changing environment of the digital space. Citizens have been equally successful in claiming the digital space to themselves by overcoming online censorship in the light of protest events on the ground.

  •   30.06.24  
    (2023): Does my leader care about my subgroup? : A multilevel model of team faultlines, LMX quality, and employee absenteeism European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. Taylor & Francis. 2023, 32(2), pp. 234-244. ISSN 1359-432X. eISSN 1464-0643. Available under: doi: 10.1080/1359432X.2022.2136522

    Does my leader care about my subgroup? : A multilevel model of team faultlines, LMX quality, and employee absenteeism

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    This article investigates the impact of demographic team faultlines on employee absenteeism by considering the level of leader-member exchange (LMX) that supervisors develop with members from different subgroups in a team. We integrate faultline research with the literature on LMX differentiation to build an integrative multilevel model to explain individual absenteeism behaviour. Drawing from social categorization and social comparison theory, we propose that members of subgroups that receive less favourable LMX treatment than their outgroup are particularly likely to increase their absenteeism behaviour due to faultline-induced social categorization. Our predictions receive empirical support in a study with 164 employees from a German electrical engineering company. We discuss implications for the faultline and LMX literature and executives who lead diverse teams.

  • (2023): Positional Deprivation and Support for Redistribution and Social Insurance in Europe Comparative Political Studies. Sage Publications. 2023, 56(5), pp. 655-693. ISSN 0010-4140. eISSN 1552-3829. Available under: doi: 10.1177/00104140221115168

    Positional Deprivation and Support for Redistribution and Social Insurance in Europe

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    We argue that support for redistribution increases when one experiences “positional deprivation,” situations when one’s own income increases slower or decreases faster compared to that of others. This specific combination of economic suffering over-time and relative to others has effects beyond well-studied measures of suffering that are static and/or absolute in nature, such as income level. We empirically explore this hypothesis by using “objective-material” measures of positional deprivation derived from the Luxembourg Income Studies and the European Social Survey, and by using “subjective” measures derived from an original survey in 13 European countries. We find that those whose income growth is outpaced by the average and/or richest members of their country are more likely to support redistribution. We also find that the objective and subjective measures of positional deprivation are significantly correlated, and that positional deprivation’s fostering of support for redistribution holds above-and-beyond static and/or absolute measures of economic experience.

  • (2023): What Lies Beneath : Mediators of Public Support for International Economic Cooperation Political Studies Review. Sage. 2023, 21(4), pp. 697-718. ISSN 1478-9299. eISSN 1478-9302. Available under: doi: 10.1177/14789299221113188

    What Lies Beneath : Mediators of Public Support for International Economic Cooperation

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    The current public backlash against several trade agreements has triggered a vivid discourse about the impact of top-down communication of such initiatives on public opinion. Findings from previous work on the impact of issue frames provide distinct expectations about the influence of different types of messages on people’s opinion. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying the impact of message cues on opinion formation. In this article, we shed light on one potential mechanism that mediates issue framing effects: individuals’ emotional reaction. By means of a survey-embedded experiment conducted in the United States and Germany, we expose respondents to different frames about the benefits and risks of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement. The results show that frames have a significant effect on public opinion, but frames that emphasize losses seem more persuasive than frames promoting the gains from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Complementing our empirical investigation, with a causal mediation analysis we find that framing effects are indeed mediated by people’s emotional responses to the frames.

  • (2023): Public opinion towards welfare state reform : The role of political trust and government satisfaction European Journal of Political Research. Wiley. 2023, 62(1), pp. 197-220. ISSN 0304-4130. eISSN 1475-6765. Available under: doi: 10.1111/1475-6765.12501

    Public opinion towards welfare state reform : The role of political trust and government satisfaction

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    The traditional welfare state, which emerged as a response to industrialization, is not well equipped toaddress the challenges of today’s post-industrial knowledge economies. Experts and policymakers have thereforecalled for welfare state readjustment towards a ‘social investment’ model (focusing on human skills and capabilities). Under what conditions are citizens willing to accept such future-oriented reforms? We point at the crucialbut hitherto neglected role of citizens’ trust in and satisfaction with government. Trust and satisfaction matterbecause future-oriented reforms generate uncertainties, risks and costs, which trust and government satisfactioncan attenuate. We offer micro-level causal evidence using experiments in a representative survey covering eightEuropean countries and confirm these findings with European Social Survey data for 22 countries. We find thattrust and government satisfaction increase reform support and moderate the effects of self-interest and ideologicalstandpoints. These findings have crucial implications not least because they help explain why some countriesmanage – but others fail – to enact important reforms.

  • (2023): Working as a team : Do legislators coordinate their geographic representation efforts in party-centred environments? Party Politics. Sage. 2023, 29(5), pp. 918-928. ISSN 1354-0688. eISSN 1460-3683. Available under: doi: 10.1177/13540688221098157

    Working as a team : Do legislators coordinate their geographic representation efforts in party-centred environments?

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    Why do legislators engage in geographic representation in party-centred electoral systems, where they face weak re-election incentives to cultivate a personal vote? Existing research offers cross-pressuring incentive structures and intrinsic localism motivations as individual-level factors to explain this puzzle. In this article, we propose an alternative argument based on the principle of collective action within party-internal structures of labour division. We argue that legislators elected in the same multi-member district and under the same party label (party delegations) share collective vote-seeking incentives to collaborate with each other in order to strike a balance between the collective benefits and individual costs of constituency-oriented activities. Results from a comparative study of written parliamentary questions in Germany and Spain support our argument. Specifically, the study suggests that individual localism attributes interact with the team composition of party delegations to shape constituency-orientated behaviour.

  • (2023): Wirtschafts- und sozialpolitische Einstellungen und Populismus : Vertikale Konfliktachsen statt ideologischer Konsistenz Politische Vierteljahresschrift. Springer. ISSN 0720-7182. eISSN 1862-2860. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s11615-023-00513-y

    Wirtschafts- und sozialpolitische Einstellungen und Populismus : Vertikale Konfliktachsen statt ideologischer Konsistenz

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    Aktuelle Forschung verbindet populistische Einstellungen von BürgerInnen mit ökonomischen Sorgen, Gefühlen fehlender Anerkennung oder politischer Unzufriedenheit. Dieser Artikel untersucht, welche konkreten wirtschafts- und sozialpolitischen Einstellungen BürgerInnen mit Populismus verknüpfen. Argumentiert wird, dass die Bewertung konflikthafter vertikaler gesellschaftlicher Relationen die Zusammenhänge strukturiert: Als ökonomische Oben-Unten-Relationen werden das Verhältnis von Staat zu WirtschaftsakteurInnen und von ressourcenreich zu ressourcenarm begriffen. Populismus definiert sich über die politische Oben-Unten-Relation zwischen Elite und Volk. Wird das „Oben“ jeweils als Problem bewertet, kann diese vertikale Konfliktachse beide Einstellungsdimensionen verbinden. Regressionsanalysen auf Basis der ALLBUS 2018 zeigen, wie erwartet, dass die Ablehnung staatlicher Eingriffe in die Wirtschaft, aber auch die Befürwortung von Umverteilung und eine Skepsis im Bereich Außenwirtschaft mit populistischen Einstellungen verbunden sind. Wahrnehmungen ökonomischer Missstände beeinflussen die Stärke der Zusammenhänge kaum statistisch signifikant. Parteipräferenzen schwächen nur die Assoziationen bezüglich der Außenwirtschaft ab. Mit der Bewertung konflikthafter Oben-Unten-Relationen bietet der Artikel eine Erklärung für die ideologisch inkonsistenten Zusammenhänge an. Um deren Mobilisierung nicht rechtspopulistischen Parteien zu überlassen, sollten auch andere Parteien die vertikalen Konflikte adressieren, ohne dabei Grundpfeiler der westlichen Demokratie zu gefährden.

  • (2023): Differentiated integration in the European Union : Institutional effects, public opinion, and alternative flexibility arrangements European Union Politics. Sage Publications. 2023, 24(1), pp. 3-20. ISSN 1465-1165. eISSN 1741-2757. Available under: doi: 10.1177/14651165221119083

    Differentiated integration in the European Union : Institutional effects, public opinion, and alternative flexibility arrangements

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    Research on differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union (EU) has focused on the causes, conditions, and patterns of differentiation in European integration. By contrast, we know less about its effects on institutional outcomes and public support; moreover, alternatives to de jure DI in providing flexibility are still rarely accounted for. This introduction to the special issue takes stock of, and discusses omissions, in the current literature on DI. We propose an analytical framework, centering on efficiency and legitimacy, to study the effects of different types of DI. We use this framework to motivate the choice and assess the contributions of the articles selected for this special issue.

  • (2023): Search engine effects on news consumption : Ranking and representativeness outweigh familiarity in news selection New Media & Society. Sage. ISSN 1461-4448. eISSN 1461-7315. Available under: doi: 10.1177/14614448231154926

    Search engine effects on news consumption : Ranking and representativeness outweigh familiarity in news selection

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    While individuals’ trust in search engine results is well-supported, little is known about their preferences when selecting news. We use web-tracked behavioral data across a 2-month period (280 participants) and we analyze three competing factors, two algorithmic (ranking and representativeness) and one psychological (familiarity), that could influence the selection of search results. We use news engagement as a proxy for familiarity and investigate news articles presented on Google search pages (n = 1221). We find a significant effect of algorithmic factors but not of familiarity. We find that ranking plays a lesser role for news compared to non-news, suggesting a more careful decision-making process. We confirm that Google Search drives individuals to unfamiliar sources, and find that it increases the diversity of the political audience of news sources. We tackle the challenge of measuring social science theories in contexts shaped by algorithms, demonstrating their leverage over the behaviors of individuals.

  • (2023): Shine Bright Like a Diamond : When Signaling Creates Glass Cliffs for Female Executives Journal of Management. Sage Publications. 2023, 49(3), pp. 1005-1036. ISSN 0149-2063. eISSN 1557-1211. Available under: doi: 10.1177/01492063211067518

    Shine Bright Like a Diamond : When Signaling Creates Glass Cliffs for Female Executives

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    There is mixed support for the glass cliff hypothesis that firms will more likely appoint female candidates into top management positions when in crisis. We trace the inconsistent findings back to an underdeveloped theoretical link and deficient identification strategies. Using signaling theory, we suggest that crisis firms appoint female top managers to signal change to the market and argue that the effect is context-dependent. In a field study of 26,156 executive appointments in U.S. firms between 2000 and 2016, we exploit a regression discontinuity to test for the causal impact of firm crisis status on the likelihood of female top management appointments and for moderators of the effect. We find that crisis status leads to a significant increase in female top management appointments and that crisis (vs. noncrisis) firms are more likely to frame female appointments as change-related in press releases. Importantly, the presence of the glass cliff effect hinges on attributes of the signaler (absence of another female executive), signal (appointment type), and receiver (investor attention). The findings robustly evidence the glass cliff and our theoretical extensions.

  • (2023): Who Deserves European Solidarity? : How Recipient Characteristics Shaped Public Support for International Medical and Financial Aid during COVID-19 British Journal of Political Science. Cambridge University Press. 2023, 53(2), pp. 629-651. ISSN 0007-1234. eISSN 1469-2112. Available under: doi: 10.1017/S0007123422000357

    Who Deserves European Solidarity? : How Recipient Characteristics Shaped Public Support for International Medical and Financial Aid during COVID-19

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    International solidarity is indispensable for coping with global crises; however, solidarity is frequently constrained by public opinion. Past research has examined who, on the donor side, is willing to support European and international aid. However, we know less about who, on the recipient side, is perceived to deserve solidarity. The article argues that potential donors consider situational circumstances and those relational features that link them to the recipients. Using factorial survey experiments, we analyse public support for international medical and financial aid in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show that recipient countries' situational need and control, as well as political community criteria, namely, group membership, adherence to shared values and reciprocity, played a crucial role in explaining public support for aid. Important policy implications result: on the donor side, fault-attribution frames matter; on the recipient side, honouring community norms is key to receiving aid.

  • (2023): Can the social dimension of time contribute to explain the public evaluation of political change? : The case of European integration International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Sage. 2023, 64(1), pp. 57-76. ISSN 0020-7152. eISSN 1745-2554. Available under: doi: 10.1177/00207152221108641

    Can the social dimension of time contribute to explain the public evaluation of political change? : The case of European integration

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    According to social theorists of time, the way societies structure and value different aspects of time plays an important role in people’s perception and evaluation of economic, political, and cultural change. I explore if two dimensions of social time—social acceleration and long-term orientation—have an effect on the public evaluation of the speed of European integration. Combining Eurobarometer data for 27 societies with measures for social acceleration and time horizons, the results show distinct patterns for the perception and preferences of European integration. Whereas I find no connection between dimensions of social time and the perceived speed of integration, more social acceleration and cultural long-term orientation lead to a desire for a slower speed of European integration. Even when controlled for other economic and political macro-factors, temporal structures can play a key role in the evaluation of political change in European societies.

  • (2023): How differentiated integration shapes the constraining dissensus Journal of European Public Policy. Routledge. ISSN 1350-1763. eISSN 1466-4429. Available under: doi: 10.1080/13501763.2023.2229377

    How differentiated integration shapes the constraining dissensus

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    If European Union (EU) member states realise differentiations in EU Treaties, what effect do we see on public and political support for future integration? We argue on the basis of a two-tier integration theory and postfunctionalism that differentiations of member states do lead to a preference for slower future integration by its citizens and parties. Once citizens and parties are used to opting out, they demand more of the same in the future. We test our arguments with time-series cross-sectional data for 1994–2018 on all voluntary primary law opt-outs in the EU. Our panel matching estimates demonstrate that opt-outs decrease integration support. After a differentiation, parties become more Eurosceptic on average and publics express a lower preference for future integration. This suggests that differentiated integration is not a cure against Euroscepticism that leads to a unified EU in the future but rather reinforces two-tier integration.

  • (2023): International Sanctions Termination, 1990–2018 : Introducing the IST dataset Journal of Peace Research. Sage. 2023, 60(4), pp. 709-719. ISSN 0022-3433. eISSN 1460-3578. Available under: doi: 10.1177/00223433221087080

    International Sanctions Termination, 1990–2018 : Introducing the IST dataset

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    Despite intense public and policy debates about the termination (and re-instatement) of sanctions in cases such as Iran, Cuba and Russia, research has hitherto focused on sanctions imposition and effectiveness, directing little attention towards their removal. Existing work has been constrained by a lack of adequate data. In response, we introduce a novel dataset that contains information on the termination of all EU, UN, US and regional sanctions between 1990 and 2018. In contrast to previous datasets, which rely on media reports, the International Sanctions Termination (IST) dataset systematically codes official governmental and intergovernmental documents. It contains information on the design of sanctions – including expiry dates, review provisions and termination requirements – and captures the gradual process of adapting and ending sanctions. The article describes the data collection process, considers IST’s complementarity to and compatibility with existing datasets, and discusses the newly captured variables, exploring how they affect the termination of sanctions. The results indicate that changes in the sender’s goals and investments in monitoring devices lead to significantly longer sanctions spells. By contrast, clearly stipulated termination requirements decrease the expected duration of sanctions.

  • (2023): Interest group preferences towards trade agreements : institutional design matters Interest Groups & Advocacy. Springer. 2023, 12(1), pp. 48-72. ISSN 2047-7414. eISSN 2047-7422. Available under: doi: 10.1057/s41309-022-00174-z

    Interest group preferences towards trade agreements : institutional design matters

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    Interest groups play a key role in the political economy of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Their support for or opposition to a planned PTA tends to be crucial in determining the fate of PTAs. But which PTAs receive support from (which) interest groups? Clearly, the design of a PTA, that is, which types of provisions are (not) included in the agreement, is essential in that respect. We argue that trade and trade-related provisions, such as those that regulate services trade or the protection of intellectual property rights, mainly increase support for PTAs among export-oriented business groups. In contrast, the inclusion of non-trade provisions, namely clauses aimed at the protection of environmental and labour standards, makes citizen groups, labour unions, and import-competing business groups more supportive of trade agreements. Relying on original data from a survey of interest groups across the globe, including a conjoint experiment, we find support for the argument that different types of interest groups value the inclusion of trade and non-trade provisions in PTAs differently. Interestingly, however, we find little difference between export-oriented and import-competing business interests. Our study speaks to research on interest groups and trade policy.

  • (2023): LEIA : Linguistic Embeddings for the Identification of Affect EPJ Data Science. Springer. 2023, 12, 52. eISSN 2193-1127. Available under: doi: 10.1140/epjds/s13688-023-00427-0

    LEIA : Linguistic Embeddings for the Identification of Affect

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    The wealth of text data generated by social media has enabled new kinds of analysis of emotions with language models. These models are often trained on small and costly datasets of text annotations produced by readers who guess the emotions expressed by others in social media posts. This affects the quality of emotion identification methods due to training data size limitations and noise in the production of labels used in model development. We present LEIA, a model for emotion identification in text that has been trained on a dataset of more than 6 million posts with self-annotated emotion labels for happiness, affection, sadness, anger, and fear. LEIA is based on a word masking method that enhances the learning of emotion words during model pre-training. LEIA achieves macro-F1 values of approximately 73 on three in-domain test datasets, outperforming other supervised and unsupervised methods in a strong benchmark that shows that LEIA generalizes across posts, users, and time periods. We further perform an out-of-domain evaluation on five different datasets of social media and other sources, showing LEIA’s robust performance across media, data collection methods, and annotation schemes. Our results show that LEIA generalizes its classification of anger, happiness, and sadness beyond the domain it was trained on. LEIA can be applied in future research to provide better identification of emotions in text from the perspective of the writer.

  • (2023): Multi-level blame attribution and public support for EU welfare policies West European Politics. Taylor & Francis. 2023, 46(7), pp. 1369-1395. ISSN 0140-2382. eISSN 1743-9655. Available under: doi: 10.1080/01402382.2022.2126679

    Multi-level blame attribution and public support for EU welfare policies

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    Since the Eurozone crisis, intense political debate has resurfaced about deservingness judgements in European solidarity. To contribute to this debate, this article proposes a refined concept of ‘multi-level blame attribution’. It postulates that public support for EU-level welfare policies crucially depends on how citizens attribute responsibility for economic outcomes across different levels of agency. Results from an original public opinion survey conducted in 10 European Union member states demonstrate that attributing blame to individuals decreases citizens’ willingness to show solidarity with needy Europeans, whereas attributing blame to the EU increases support. The role of attributing blame to national governments is dependent on the country context; beliefs that worse economic outcomes are caused by national governments’ policy decisions tend to dampen support for EU targeted welfare policies only in the Nordic welfare states. The article concludes by discussing the implications of multi-level blame attribution for the formation of public attitudes towards European solidarity.

  • Scharrer, Tabea (Hrsg.) (2023): Asylpolitik SCHARRER, Tabea, ed. and others. Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung : Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2023, pp. 481-488. Nomos Handbuch. ISBN 978-3-8487-7785-3. Available under: doi: 10.5771/9783748921905-481

    Asylpolitik

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    dc.title:


    dc.contributor.author: Mayer, Jana; Schneider, Gerald

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