Journal: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

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Publisher

Nature

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ISSN

2662-9992

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2020 - 202521
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Publications 1 - 10 of 21
  • How voting rules impact legitimacy
    Item type: Journal Article
    Hausladen, Carina I.; Hänggli Fricker, Regula; Helbing, Dirk; et al. (2024)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    Collective action is essential for addressing the grand challenges of our time. However, for such action to be successful, decision-making processes must be perceived as legitimate. In this study, we investigate the legitimacy of different voting methods. Using a pre-registered human subject experiment, 120 participants cast their votes using four voting methods: majority voting, combined approval voting, range voting, and the modified Borda count. These methods represent a range of preference elicitation designs, from low to high complexity and flexibility. Furthermore, we developed a legitimacy scale upon which the participants rate the voting methods. The experiment was conducted in a non-political setting (voting on color preferences) and a political context (voting on COVID-19-related questions). Our findings suggest that the perceived legitimacy of a voting method is context-dependent. Specifically, preferential voting methods are seen as more legitimate than majority voting in a political decision-making situation, but only for individuals with well-defined preferences. Furthermore, preferential voting methods are more legitimate than majority voting in a highly polarized situation.
  • Stress-testing the international poverty line and the official global poverty statistics
    Item type: Journal Article
    Moatsos, Michail; Lazopoulos, Achillefs (2024)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    We investigate the current method of derivation of the international poverty line used for monitoring SDG 1 in two key directions: (a) we ask whether the official method used by the World Bank is fit for the purpose of measuring extreme poverty and if their method is defensibly valid both internally and externally; and (b) we ask whether the resulting statistics perform acceptably well in terms of accuracy and precision. Using comparative analysis, error accounting methods, and minimization criteria, on key poverty indicators, our investigation gathers compelling evidence that leans towards a negative answer to both questions. We conclude that the adoption of alternative methods for monitoring global poverty should be considered in an official capacity with urgency.
  • Satisfaction of scientists during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown
    Item type: Journal Article
    Raabe, Isabel J.; Ehlert, Alexander; Johann, David (2020)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    The discussion of the social, political and economic consequences of the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic mainly revolves around negative effects. This study exploits a unique opportunity and analyses data from a survey (N = 13,316) that happened to be in the field in the months of the development and eventual manifestation of the COVID-19 pandemic. It documents slightly higher levels of average general life satisfaction as well as of satisfaction with various specific aspects of life (health, work, work-life balance and leisure) during the lockdown among scientists in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. It is argued that the lockdown can be regarded as a large-scale social experiment of a very sudden and abrupt change of work and social life, which is unique in history. Daily survey data elicited before and after the lockdown allows the construction of a quasi-experimental design for analysing how this abrupt change of social reality has affected satisfaction. For scientists, the lockdown mainly entailed the transition to work from home, leading to a reduced speed of life and allowing for more flexibility in incorporating family and leisure into the work day. It is discussed how some of these mechanisms might apply to the general population.
  • Response Item Network (ResIN): A network-based approach to explore attitude systems
    Item type: Journal Article
    Carpentras, Dino; Lueders, Adrian; Quayle, Michael (2024)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    Belief network analysis (BNA) refers to a class of methods designed to detect and outline structural organizations of complex attitude systems. BNA can be used to analyze attitude-structures of abstract concepts such as ideologies, worldviews, and norm systems that inform how people perceive and navigate the world. The present manuscript presents a formal specification of the Response-Item Network (or ResIN), a new methodological approach that advances BNA in at least two important ways. First, ResIN allows for the detection of attitude asymmetries between different groups, improving the applicability and validity of BNA in research contexts that focus on intergroup differences and/or relationships. Second, ResIN's networks include a spatial component that is directly connected to item response theory (IRT). This allows for access to latent space information in which each attitude (i.e. each response option across items in a survey) is positioned in relation to the core dimension(s) of group structure, revealing non-linearities and allowing for a more contextual and holistic interpretation of the attitudes network. To validate the effectiveness of ResIN, we develop a mathematical model and apply ResIN to both simulated and real data. Furthermore, we compare these results to existing methods of BNA and IRT. When used to analyze partisan belief-networks in the US-American political context, ResIN was able to reliably distinguish Democrat and Republican attitudes, even in highly asymmetrical attitude systems. These results demonstrate the utility of ResIN as a powerful tool for the analysis of complex attitude systems and contribute to the advancement of BNA.
  • The democratization dilemma: When everyone is an expert, who do we trust?
    Item type: Other Journal Item
    Mahajan, Sachit (2025)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
  • From potential to practice: rethinking Africa’s biogas revolution
    Item type: Journal Article
    Kalina, Marc; Ogwang, Jonathan Òlal; Tilley, Elizabeth (2022)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    The purpose of this comment is to call for more critical engagement with the potential and practice for biogas investment on the African continent. Over the past two decades, immense amounts of money have been spent by African governments, private individuals, and most conspicuously, international aid agencies and donors, on countless biogas projects in every country on the continent. Yet, despite the investments, biogas in African countries has not taken off, and the continent is strewn with the ruins of hundreds of failed and abandoned biogas projects. Moreover, scholarly literature contains little feedback about what actually happens on the ground. Drawing on this critical reading of the literature, including its blindspots on project outcomes and failures, and drawing on the authors’ own extensive experience with small-scale biogas projects in Malawi and South Africa, this comment article calls for more scholarly critical reflection on why a biogas revolution, that has been perennially over the horizon, has yet to arrive while centring the role of social scientists to engage with biogas owners and operators to bridge the socio-technical divide from potential to practice.
  • What science can do for democracy: a complexity science approach
    Item type: Journal Article
    Eliassi-Rad, Tina; Farrell, Henry; Garcia, David; et al. (2020)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    Political scientists have conventionally assumed that achieving democracy is a one-way ratchet. Only very recently has the question of “democratic backsliding” attracted any research attention. We argue that democratic instability is best understood with tools from complexity science. The explanatory power of complexity science arises from several features of complex systems. Their relevance in the context of democracy is discussed. Several policy recommendations are offered to help (re)stabilize current systems of representative democracy.
  • Urban traffic-parking system dynamics model with macroscopic properties: a comparative study between Shanghai and Zurich
    Item type: Journal Article
    Mesfin, Biruk Gebremedhin; Li, Zihao; Sun, Daniel Jian; et al. (2024)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    Analyzing the dynamics of parking traffic can better represent the real dynamic states of road networks, thereby allowing for a deeper analysis of the parking system’s impact. This paper comparatively investigates the impact of parking policies on two traffic networks with different infrastructure, socio-economic, and policy characteristics. Parking space, average parking duration, and parking fee policies were analyzed as a function of cruising distances and cruising time with indirect effects on traffic emissions. Empirically, the system dynamics model application is tested and validated with the macroscopic data from two central business districts (CBDs) in Shanghai (Xujiahui area) and Zurich (Bahnhofstrasse area). Results showed Bahnhofstrasse CBD is more sensitive against the policy shifts with relatively higher elasticity and indicated greater responsiveness in aggregating traffic emissions when compared with Xujiahui CBD. The findings of this study may provide an overall framework to empirically assess the performance of different traffic conditions and strategies on urban parking systems.
  • Can digital tools foster ethical deliberation?
    Item type: Journal Article
    Sleigh, Joanna; Hubbs, Shannon; Blasimme, Alessandro; et al. (2024)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    In the age of Machine Learning Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing, digital technologies have become interwoven in various aspects of society, including in our practices for ethical deliberation and decision-making. In this study, we present a systematic mapping and taxonomy of digital tools designed explicitly for this purpose and published between 2010 and 2023. By providing a comprehensive overview of the landscape, we identify the key features and mechanisms employed to facilitate ethical deliberation. This research enhances our understanding of the potential role that digital tools can play in supporting ethical decision-making processes, offering valuable insights for ethicists, educators, government organizations, and private institutions seeking to develop, deploy, or utilize such tools.
  • Mapping AI ethics narratives: evidence from Twitter discourse between 2015 and 2022
    Item type: Journal Article
    Wei, Mengyi; Zhang, Puzhen; Chen, Chuan; et al. (2025)
    Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
    The ethical issues that arise in the development of AI technologies are closely linked to public engagement. Although Twitter, as an online public sphere, provides a platform for exploring AI ethics discourse, it is difficult for current research to effectively extract fine-grained but meaningful information from the vast amount of social media data. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a research framework for the fine-grained exploration of AI ethics discourse on Twitter. The framework consists of two main parts: (1) combining neural networks with large-scale language models to construct a hierarchically structured topic framework that not only extracts popular topics of public interest, but also highlights smaller, yet significant voices; (2) using narrative metaphors to achieve the integration of fragmented information across levels and topics, ultimately presenting a complete story to help the public better understand the evolution of topics within AI ethics discourse. Our research has revealed that the most significant concern in the current AI ethics discourse is the lag in AI-related laws and ethical guidelines. It also shows that the integration of AI technology with the humanities is essential to promote a good public society. Through cross-level fine-grained mining, this study uncovers information hidden beneath the noise interference, which helps policymakers make targeted adjustments or improvements to policies. In addition, this research framework provides a reference for fine-grained mining of other specific issues in social media data.
Publications 1 - 10 of 21