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The Love of Large Numbers Revisited: A Coherence Model of the Popularity Bias
Get PDFPreferences are often based on social information such as experiences and recommendations of other people. The reliance on social information is especially relevant in the case of online shopping, where buying decisions for products may often be based on online reviews by other customers. Recently, Powell, Yu, DeWolf, and Holyoak (2017, Psychological Science, 28, 1432-1442) showed that, when deciding between two products, people do not consider the number of product reviews in a statistically appropriate way as predicted by a Bayesian model but rather exhibit a bias for popular products (i.e., products with many reviews). In the present work, we propose a coherence model of the cognitive mechanism underlying this empirical phenomenon. The new model assumes that people strive for a coherent representation of the available information (i.e., the average review score and the number of reviews). To test this theoretical account, we reanalyzed the data of Powell and colleagues and ran an online study with 244 participants using a wider range of stimulus material than in the original study. Besides replicating the popularity bias, the study provided clear evidence for the predicted coherence effect, that is, decisions became more confident and faster when the available information about popularity and quality was congruent
Dynamics of opinion expression
Get PDFModeling efforts in opinion dynamics have to a large extent ignored that opinion exchange between individuals can also have an effect on how willing they are to express their opinion publicly. Here, we introduce a model of public opinion expression. Two groups of agents with different opinion on an issue interact with each other, changing the willingness to express their opinion according to whether they perceive themselves as part of the majority or minority opinion. We formulate the model as a multigroup majority game and investigate the Nash equilibria. We also provide a dynamical systems perspective: Using the reinforcement learning algorithm of Q-learning, we reduce the N-agent system in a mean-field approach to two dimensions which represent the two opinion groups. This two-dimensional system is analyzed in a comprehensive bifurcation analysis of its parameters. The model identifies social-structural conditions for public opinion predominance of different groups. Among other findings, we show under which circumstances a minority can dominate public discourse
Supplemental Material for “Notable enough? The questioning of women’s biographies on Wikipedia”
Get PDFTable I. Sample size
Table II. Reliability coefficients
Table III. Total and relative numbers of biographies nominated for deletion by specific criteria for notability
Figure I. Percentage of users and their level of justification by their position and the biography’s gender
Figure II. Numbers of German-language Wikipedia biographies by tagged gender category and year of creation
Figure III. Number of deletion nominations (N = 396) per logged-in users (N = 158)
Figure V. Number of decisions (N = 362) per administrator (N = 35)
Figure IV. Number of discussions (N = 461) logged-in users (N = 608) participated i
Algorithmen als Rationalitätsmythos
Get PDFAlgorithmen gelten derzeit als die Antwort auf eine Vielzahl gesellschaftlicher Probleme. Von der Bekämpfung des Klimawandels über die Vorbeugung von Armut und Kriminalität bis hin zur Früherkennung von Krebs – Algorithmen scheinen eine Universallösung zu sein. Mit dem neo-institutionalistischen Konzept rationalisierter Mythen wird in diesem Beitrag versucht, für diese solutionistische Faszination eine Erklärung zu liefern
The Digital Constellation
Get PDFThe emergence of the digital society has become one of the most pressing research topics in social science. So far, political science has been at the margins of the debate because it has been restricted by a rather narrow focus on networked communications. The paper attempts to change this by presenting a more encompassing way to address digitalisation from within political science. After briefly criticising the development of the research in political science the paper reconstructs at length some of the most popular conceptualisations in neighbouring disciplines. While we highlight the commonalities and strengths of those approaches in theorising digitalisation, we criticise their rather derivative understanding of democratic practices and the political as such. We go on to propose a modified understanding - which we term the "digital constellation" - that looks at the changing shape of democracy by developing a much more nuanced understanding of the interplay between societies and technologies. Finally, we illustrate the argument in an exemplary analysis of the changes occurring in political representation in the context of digitalisation.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Digidem Digest - Issue 24 (March 2020)
No full textThe Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter
Digidem Digest - Issue 25 (April 2020)
No full textThe Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter
Risiken Digitaler Systeme: Robotik, Lernfähigkeit und Vernetzung als aktuelle Herausforderungen für das Recht
Get PDFThis work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Privacy Implications of Voice and Speech Analysis – Information Disclosure by Inference
Get PDFInternet-connected devices, such as smartphones, smartwatches, and laptops, have become ubiquitous in modern life, reaching ever deeper into our private spheres. Among the sensors most commonly found in such devices are microphones. While various privacy concerns related to microphone-equipped devices have been raised and thoroughly discussed, the threat of unexpected inferences from audio data remains largely overlooked. Drawing from literature of diverse disciplines, this paper presents an overview of sensitive pieces of information that can, with the help of advanced data analysis methods, be derived from human speech and other acoustic elements in recorded audio. In addition to the linguistic content of speech, a speaker’s voice characteristics and manner of expression may implicitly contain a rich array of personal information, including cues to a speaker’s biometric identity, personality, physical traits, geographical origin, emotions, level of intoxication and sleepiness, age, gender, and health condition. Even a person’s socioeconomic status can be reflected in certain speech patterns. The findings compiled in this paper demonstrate that recent advances in voice and speech processing induce a new generation of privacy threats