Consistent Effects of Science and Scientist Characteristics on Public Trust across Political Regimes

Meet & Greet ab 9:45 Uhr
Auch Hybrid: https://uni-kassel.zoom.us/j/98253222582?pwd=SndDcU1rV3JjOUwyWmV6U3NnVHduZz09

Abstract:
Why does trust in science and scientists vary across regime types? There is much recent scholarship that studies declining trust in science in democracies in the face of rising populism and right wing authoritarianism. But little is known about whether and why this trend holds across the spectrum of existing non-democracies with varied degrees of state control over education systems and restrictions on domestic media and information environments. Individual perceptions of the legitimacy and credibility of science, and by extension scientists, fluctuate across sub-populations and across countries - but why? We conduct a cross-national survey experiment across ten countries with different regime types to examine whether characteristics of scientific research and personal attributes of scientists influence levels of public trust. In particular, we test two sets of hypotheses: first, that attributes of the scientific research being conducted (discipline, public impact) affect trust in science, support for public funding and evidence-informed policy-making, and second, that attributes of the scientists (gender, activism, nationality) affect trust in scientists differently based on the type of discipline.

Nils Weidmann is both a trained computer scientist and a political scientist and combines political analyses with big data from the Internet: Webauftritt von Nils B. Weidmann

as well as:
Sukayna Younger-Khan, University of Konstanz
Lisa Oswald, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin