96 research outputs found
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Using latent trait models to assess cross-national scales of the publics knowledge about science and technology
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Public discomfort at the prospect of autonomous vehicles: Building on previous surveys to measure attitudes in 11 countries
There have been many surveys of public responses to Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), both reported in peer-reviewed journals and in the mainstream media. People anchor their representations of novel technological objects within their existing experience. What elements of such experience anchor AVs? We review academic English language survey studies from 2015 to 2017 and surveys publicised in UK National newspapers which typically reveal discomfort about the prospect of AVs. Against this background we report the results of our own survey of 11,827 drivers across 11 European countries, addressing attitudes to driving alongside AVs as well as to riding in them. We establish a composite indicator of perceptions of AVs that combines responses on using AVs and sharing the road with them, and analyse its relationship with a set of covariate measures. Respondents’ technological optimism and uptake of driving technology was associated with more positive perceptions of AVs, and measures of respondents’ enjoyment of driving, and how ‘sociable’ they were towards fellow road users, was associated with more negative perceptions. The negative association between driving ‘sociability’ and enthusiasm for AVs was attenuated by levels of general technological optimism. We discuss the difficulties in researching public responses to novel technological objects and make suggestions for improvement in future survey research on AVs
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Building the UK vision of a driverless future: A Parliamentary Inquiry case study
The UK Government has endorsed the case for autonomous vehicle (AV) technology and its economic benefits in its industrial strategies since 2013. In late 2016 the Science and Technology Committee in the House of Lords (the legislature’s upper chamber) conducted an Inquiry into the policy. We conduct a content analysis of the text corpus of the Inquiry. Drawing from theories of sociotechnical change we explore how it contributes to building a vision of a future AV world embedded in a national economic and technological project. The technology is framed as a solution to societal grand challenges and the Inquiry corpus is dominated by actors committed to the project. Alternative visions, including sceptical interpretations, are present in the corpus, but rare, reflecting the selection process for contributions to the Inquiry. Predominantly, the corpus represents the public as deficient: dangerous drivers, unaware of promised benefits and unduly anxious about the unfamiliar. Their views are marginal in this Parliamentary Inquiry’s findings. AV technology is one of several possible means to pursue wider mobility policy goals of greater safety, affordability, access and sustainability. Our analysis suggests that the pursuit of an AV future risks becoming a goal in itself instead of a means to these broader societal goals
The Collins-Roscoe mechanism and D-spaces
We prove that if a space X is well ordered , or linearly
semi-stratifiable, or elastic then X is a D-space
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Have GM crops and food a future in Europe?
Intensive mono-functional agriculture, typical across many European Member States, is designed to increase the efficiency and productivity of the agricultural sector. This is accompanied by frequent spraying of crops with chemicals for protection against pests and diseases. While the health and environmental impacts of pesticides and their residues are debated among scientific experts, in the minds of European citizens they constitute the most significant food risk. The Eurobarometer public opinion survey on Food-Related Risks commissioned by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2010 looked at risk perceptions in two ways. First, an open-ended question which invited respondents to say ‘what comes to mind when they think about possible problems and risks associated with food and eating’, and second a closed question asked respondents to rate the extent to which they worry about 17 food-related risks, including pesticides in fruit and vegetables (EFSA, 2010). The most frequent response to the open question was ‘chemicals and pesticides’, mentioned spontaneously by 17% of Europeans – 7% mentioned genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In the closed question 74% of Europeans say they are fairly or very worried about pesticides in fruit and vegetables – the highest percentage of worry across 17 food risks. Sixty-seven per cent say they are fairly or very worried about GMOs. The 2010 survey replicated a number of questions from EFSA’s first Risk Issues Eurobarometer in 2005 (EFSA, 2005). The findings on worry about pesticides in fruit and vegetables show an increase of 4% over the period – 12 countries show a 4% or more increase in worry, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands and Sweden. Overall, it appears that pesticides in fruit and vegetables are not only the top concern among Europeans, but also an increasing concern
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Exploring Audience Perceptions of, and Preferences for, Online News Videos
Journalism professionals and media experts have traditionally used normatively formed criteria to evaluate news quality. Although the digital news media environment has enabled journalists to respond at unprecedented speed to audience consumption patterns, little academic research has systematically addressed how audiences themselves perceive and evaluate news, and even less has focused on audio-visual news. To help fill this research gap, we conducted in-depth group interviews with 22 online news video consumers in the UK to explore their perceptions of online news videos—an increasingly popular news format. Thematic analyses suggest audiences evaluate online news videos using a complex and interwoven set of criteria, which we group under four headings: antecedents of perceptions, emotional impacts, news and editorial values and production characteristics. Some of these criteria can be positioned clearly in relation to the literature on news quality in general, while our documentation of the others contributes new, format-specific knowledge. Our findings offer journalists practical insights into how audiences perceive and evaluate a host of characteristics of online news videos, while our conceptual framework provides a foundation for further academic research on audience evaluations of online news videos, and even audio-visual news more generally
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Poverty in Perspective: A typology of poverty in Scotland
The report sets out 13 different ‘types’ of poverty in Scotland, spread across three pre-determined life stages: families with children, working age households without children, and pensioner households
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