Culture and Social Media

博士(文学)神戸市外国語大

The Role of Behavioural Economics in Energy and Climate Policy

This article explores how behavioural economics can be applied to energy and climate policy. We present an overview of main concepts of behavioural economics and discuss how they differ from the assumptions of neoclassical economics. Next, we discuss how behavioural economics applies to three areas of energy policy: (1) consumption and habits, (2) investment in energy efficiency, and (3) provision of public goods and support for pro-environmental behaviour. We conclude that behavioural economics seems unlikely to provide the magic bullet to reduce energy consumption by the magnitude required by the International Energy Agency's “450” climate policy scenario. However it offers new suggestions as to where to start looking for potentially sustainable changes in energy consumption. We believe that the most useful role within climate policy is in addressing issues of public perception of the affordability of climate policy and in facilitating the creation of a more responsive energy demand, better capable of responding to weather-induced changes in renewable electricity supply

Securing the Youth Vote: A Comparative Analysis of Digital Persuasion on TikTok Among Political Actors

In the context of "pop politics" and "politainment," the irruption of TikTok has changed the landscape of social media and become the fastest-growing application among young people. Based on the peculiarities of the social platform's affordances and the political personalization approach, we explore the differences between political parties and political leaders in terms of digital persuasion on TikTok in Spain and Poland. This work contributes to the scarce knowledge about the strategic use of TikTok for political purposes. It also attempts to fill the gap in the comparative research into the practical uses of TikTok in different political contexts. The study explores the three classical persuasion appeals - pathos, ethos, and logos - based on a visual, quantitative analysis of N = 372 videos posted on the official TikTok profiles of the main political parties and leaders from January 1st to March 31st, 2022. Differences were found in how political parties and political leaders used TikTok's affordances as well as in the main rhetorical resource they use to persuade. We noted the use of more rational resources (logos) in the case of political parties and more emotional resources (pathos) for political leaders. Further, the rare presence of the personality in the videos of the political actors (ethos), along with their unusual privatization role, indicate that personalization on TikTok is far from being considered as part of their digital persuasion strategy

SLEEP TRACKING AS A STRESSOR: EXPERIENCES FROM SMART RING USERS

Lack of sleep hygiene is a widespread problem that drives the demand for sleep-tracking technologies. Prior research discussed the dark side of self-tracking technologies, but research specifically on sleep-tracking technologies is scarce. This study explores what potential stressors users attribute to sleep tracking executed through a smart ring. We conducted 38 semi-structured interviews and used thematic analysis to identify eight potential stressors in the context of sleep tracking. These stressors include complexity, invasion, inaccuracy, unreliability, data-feelings discrepancy, the pursuit of perfect data, vague guidance and interpretations, and overload with multiple self-tracking technologies. We further theorize these potential stressors using the person-technology fit model. The paper contributes to the nascent IS research on technostress in the context of sleep tracking