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The logo of the Social Research Centre Dortmund
Department of Social Sciences
Studierende sitzt am Arbeitsplatz und schaut auf den Laptop. © Aliona Kardash​/​TU Dortmund

The Technology Sociology Team Attends the STS Conference

Two people are standing next to a screen onto which a presentation is being projected. © STS-Unit​/​TU Graz
(from left: Kay Kohaupt-Cepera and Aaron Zilt)
Are language models replacing programmers in software development? What is the relationship between technology and climate change in the 21st century? These and other questions concerning the complex relationship between science, technology, and society were discussed at this year’s 24th STS Conference in Graz, fostering a productive exchange among computer science, the sociology of technology, engineering, climate science, and political science.

Kay Kohaupt-Cepera and Aaron Zilt from the Social Research Center’s Sociology of Technology research group attended the conference. 

At the STS conference, Kay Kohaupt-Cepera led the track “Science as a Compass and a Catalyst: Guiding Behavior Change in an Age of Transformation,” which addressed the role of the social and behavioral sciences as a guide for progressive social change. The empirically well-documented “value-action gap”—identified as a current obstacle in the relationship between science and the public—served as a starting point for an interdisciplinary discussion of incentives for individual behavioral change, from which he drew inspiration for his current research project, ATMo2.

In his presentation, Aaron Zilt introduced an interview study conducted as part of the KonCheck project, which examined perceptions of the influence of language models on the formation of political opinion, and used this as a basis to discuss the emancipatory potential of AI in the field of political education. 

In her keynote address on Monday, Professor Silke Beck of the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology spoke about the role of STS during the current political upheavals, using her work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as an example. On Tuesday, Professor Klaus Lindgaard Høyer of the University of Copenhagen opened the day with his presentation on the challenges of data-driven and international STS. 

Once again this year, the conference was also enlivened by lively discussions and conversations outside the program, with many colleagues who feel a sense of belonging to the broad field of STS.