@phdthesis{Koenigbauer2023, author = {K{\"o}nigbauer, Andreas}, title = {Intermedi{\"a}re und {\"o}ffentliche Meinungsbildung - Eine kritische W{\"u}rdigung des deutschen und europ{\"a}ischen Regulierungskonzepts von NetzDG bis DSA}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12462}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {X, 208 Seiten}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Die Arbeit untersucht die Wechselwirkungen und Friktionen zwischen verschiedenen Regelwerken auf deutscher und europ{\"a}ischer Ebene, welche die Regulierung der Medien- und Informationsintermedi{\"a}re im Interesse der {\"o}ffentlichen Meinungsbildung bezwecken.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Alhamzeh2023, author = {Alhamzeh, Alaa}, title = {Language Reasoning by means of Argument Mining and Argument Quality}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12699}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {ix, 154 Seiten}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Understanding of financial data has always been a point of interest for market participants to make better informed decisions. Recently, different cutting edge technologies have been addressed in the Financial Technology (FinTech) domain, including numeracy understanding, opinion mining and financial ocument processing. In this thesis, we are interested in analyzing the arguments of financial experts with the goal of supporting investment decisions. Although various business studies confirm the crucial role of argumentation in financial communications, no work has addressed this problem as a computational argumentation task. In other words, the automatic analysis of arguments. In this regard, this thesis presents contributions in the three essential axes of theory, data, and evaluation to fill the gap between argument mining and financial text. First, we propose a method for determining the structure of the arguments stated by company representatives during the public announcement of their quarterly results and future estimations through earnings conference calls. The proposed scheme is derived from argumentation theory at the micro-structure level of discourse. We further conducted the corresponding annotation study and published the first financial dataset annotated with arguments: FinArg. Moreover, we investigate the question of evaluating the quality of arguments in this financial genre of text. To tackle this challenge, we suggest using two levels of quality metrics, considering both the Natural Language Processing (NLP) literature of argument quality assessment and the financial era peculiarities. Hence, we have also enriched the FinArg data with our quality dimensions to produce the FinArgQuality dataset. In terms of evaluation, we validate the principle of ensemble learning on the argument identification and argument unit classification tasks. We show that combining a traditional machine learning model along with a deep learning one, via an integration model (stacking), improves the overall performance, especially in small dataset settings. In addition, despite the fact that argument mining is mainly a domain dependent task, to this date, the number of studies that tackle the generalization of argument mining models is still relatively small. Therefore, using our stacking approach and in comparison to the transfer learning model of DistilBert, we address and analyze three real-world scenarios concerning the model robustness over completely unseen domains and unseen topics. Furthermore, with the aim of the automatic assessment of argument strength, we have investigated and compared different (refined) versions of Bert-based models that incorporate external knowledge in the decision layer. Consequently, our method outperforms the baseline model by 13 ± 2\% in terms of F1-score through integrating Bert with encoded categorical features. Beyond our theoretical and methodological proposals, our model of argument quality assessment, annotated corpora, and evaluation approaches are publicly available, and can serve as strong baselines for future work in both FinNLP and computational argumentation domains. Hence, directly exploiting this thesis, we proposed to the community, a new task/challenge related to the analysis of financial arguments: FinArg-1, within the framework of the NTCIR-17 conference. We also used our proposals to react to the Touch{\´e} challenge at the CLEF 2021 conference. Our contribution was selected among the «Best of Labs».}, language = {en} } @article{SteinbrinkAufenvenneHaaseetal.2023, author = {Steinbrink, Malte and Aufenvenne, Philipp and Haase, Christian and Pochadt, Max}, title = {Matilda in der Humangeographie: Gender Citation Gap und Zitierpartikularismus}, series = {GW Unterricht}, journal = {GW Unterricht}, number = {169}, publisher = {Verlag der {\"O}sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften}, doi = {10.1553/gw-unterricht169s5}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12504}, pages = {5 -- 21}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Vergeschlechtlichte Ungleichheiten in der Wissenschaft sind seit langem bekannt und bestehen trotz aller Gegenmaßnahmen fort. Gender Gaps zeigen sich nicht nur in der universit{\"a}ren Personalstruktur, sondern auch in der Wissenschaftspraxis: Akademische Leistungen von Frauen erhalten oft weniger Anerkennung. Hierf{\"u}r hat sich die Bezeichnung Matilda-Effekt etabliert. Dieser Beitrag nimmt die f{\"u}r die Reputationsverteilung zentrale Praxis des Zitierens netzwerkanalytisch in den Blick und fragt, ob es in der deutschsprachigen Humangeographie einen Gender Citation Gap gibt.}, language = {de} } @article{Donner2022, author = {Donner, Eva Katharina}, title = {Research data management systems and the organization of universities and research institutes: A systematic literature review}, series = {Journal of Librarianship and Information Science}, volume = {55}, journal = {Journal of Librarianship and Information Science}, number = {2}, publisher = {SAGE Publications}, address = {Sage UK: London, England}, issn = {0961-0006}, doi = {10.1177/09610006211070282}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12654}, pages = {261 -- 281}, year = {2022}, abstract = {New technological developments, the availability of big data, and the creation of research platforms open a variety of opportunities to generate, store, and analyze research data. To ensure the sustainable handling of research data, the European Commission as well as scientific commissions have recently highlighted the importance of implementing a research data management system (RDMS) in higher education institutes (HEI) which combines technical as well as organizational solutions. A deep understanding of the requirements of research data management (RDM), as well as an overview of the different stakeholders, is a key prerequisite for the implementation of an RDMS. Based on a scientific literature review, the aim of this study is to answer the following research questions: "What organizational factors need to be considered when implementing an RDMS? How do these organizational factors interact with each other and how do they constrain or facilitate the implementation of an RDMS?" The structure of the analysis is built on the four components of Leavitt's classical model of organizational change: task, structure, technology, and people. The findings reveal that the implementation of RDMS is strongly impacted by the organizational structure, infrastructure, labor culture as well as strategic considerations. Overall, this literature review summarizes different approaches for the implementation of an RDMS. It also identifies areas for future research.}, language = {en} } @article{SenglHeinke2023, author = {Sengl, Michael and Heinke, Elfi}, title = {Teaching Journalism Literacy in Schools: The Role of Media Companies as Media Educators in Germany}, series = {Media and Communication}, volume = {volume 11}, journal = {Media and Communication}, number = {issue 2}, publisher = {Cogitatio Press}, address = {Lisbon, Portugal}, doi = {10.17645/mac.v11i2.6389}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12499}, pages = {53 -- 63}, year = {2023}, abstract = {German journalism is facing major challenges including declining circulation, funding, trust, and political allegations of spreading disinformation. Increased media literacy in the population is one way to counter these issues and their implications. This especially applies to the sub-concept of journalism literacy, focusing on the ability to consume news critically and reflectively, thus enabling democratic participation. For media companies, promoting journalism literacy seems logical for economic and altruistic reasons. However, research on German initiatives is scarce. This article presents an explorative qualitative survey of experts from seven media companies offering journalistic media education projects in German schools, focusing on the initiatives' content, structure, and motivation. Results show that initiatives primarily aim at students and teachers, offering mostly education on journalism (e.g., teaching material) and via journalism (e.g., journalistic co-production with students). While these projects mainly provide information on the respective medium and journalistic practices, dealing with disinformation is also a central goal. Most initiatives are motivated both extrinsically (e.g., reaching new audiences) and intrinsically (e.g., democratic responsibility). Despite sometimes insufficient resources and reluctant teachers, media companies see many opportunities in their initiatives: Gaining trust and creating resilience against disinformation are just two examples within the larger goal of enabling young people to be informed and opinionated members of a democratic society.}, language = {en} } @techreport{Klumpp2023, author = {Klumpp, Lorenz}, title = {Populism by the media: Bildtypen in der Darstellung des politischen Personals auf Compact-Covern - eine Forschungsdokumentation}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12458}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Die vorliegende Forschungsdokumentation stellt die in einer Studie ermittelten Bildtypen auf Covern des Compact-Magazins detailliert mittels der ikonographisch-ikonologischen Analyse vor. Vor dem theoretischen Hintergrund des populism by the media kann aufgezeigt werden, dass sich in der visuellen Darstellung von PolitikerInnen auf den Compact-Titelbildern sowohl Variationen in der visuellen Inszenierung der populistischen Dichotomie zwischen ‚Volk' und ‚Elite' finden als auch die rechtspopulistische Konstruktion eines ethnokulturell homogenen Volkes.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Grassl2024, author = {Graßl, Isabella}, title = {Diversity in Programming Education: Effects of Topic and Group Constellation on Young Programming Novices}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15049}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {xi, 256 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The field of software engineering faces a significant diversity crisis, characterized by a critical lack of heterogeneity despite ongoing efforts to promote gender equality. The persistent male dominance in this domain has created an urgent need for more heterogeneous groups in software engineering. This lack of diversity not only hinders underrepresented groups from entering the field but also prevents them from gaining initial programming experiences, which are a core component of software engineering and essential for developing computational thinking. To address this crisis and its implications, early interventions are key in shaping positive perceptions, building confidence, and sparking initial interest in programming among underrepresented groups before societal stereotypes of programming as a nerdy field manifests. This means starting with basic programming courses for children and continuing through to first-year university students in order to foster technical skills and computational thinking, alongside creativity and collaboration. However, there is limited understanding of how introductory programming course designs impact diversity-dependent characteristics to create welcoming and learning-friendly environments. This understanding is particularly important for underrepresented groups, especially girls, to benefit from their first programming experiences as they are often hindered by the initial perception of programming as (1) abstract and unappealing, and (2) non-social to novices. Engaging, creative, and relatable topics in programming courses might demystify complex programming concepts, making them more accessible, less intimidating, and appealing. However, understanding programming is not just about the content---it is also about the context in which it is learned. Introducing programming as social activity is important, particularly for young learners. By emphasizing team work, we might encourage collaboration and peer support, counteracting the lone-wolf programmer stereotype. Therefore, this doctoral thesis investigates the effects of both key aspects in programming courses---(1) topic choices and (2) group constellations---on young programming novices. The aim is to provide a holistic understanding of how different course designs can support diverse learners and promote gender equality in programming education. While this research primarily addresses gender diversity due to the persistent gender gap in software engineering, it also examines additional diversity dimensions, including age, ethnicity, prior programming experience, disabilities, and educational background. A total of 13 studies were conducted within this thesis, examining the current state of educational settings and utilizing various introductory programming courses designed for children aged 8 to 18, as well as first-year university students. These studies employed different programming environments, such as Scratch and Sonic Pi, and incorporated a variety of topics and group constellations to observe their effects on student outcomes. By using a mixed-methods design, data were gathered through surveys, observations, and both data-driven and manual code analysis. Key findings reveal that it is particularly noteworthy how children utilize the programming environment to engage with and creatively express topics aligned with their interests which also align mostly with gender-stereotypes, including elements from internet and popular culture as well as socio-cultural narratives. However, gender-sensitive and neutral topic choices enhance engagement, self-efficacy, contribution, code quality and creative output, while also contributing to reduce stereotypical beliefs about programming, particularly among girls. In line with the findings for the course topic, group constellations also influence programming experiences. In particular, introducing pair programming in courses shows a promising approach for young learners, but attention must be paid to mitigate socially learned gender-stereotypical behaviours. Another finding indicates that, unlike professional software teams, mixed-diverse student teams often encounter substantial challenges, thus benefit from clear communication guidelines and supportive environments to promote better collaboration. This doctoral thesis concludes with guidelines for designing more effective and inclusive introductory programming courses. These recommendations include using gender-sensitive course materials, allowing for creative freedom through topic choices while encouraging the use of advanced programming concepts, promoting collaboration through pair programming while fostering enhanced communication, boosting self-efficacy with quick positive feedback for girls in particular, and providing emotional support for underrepresented groups. By following these guidelines, educators can create more engaging, inclusive, and effective programming courses. This may ultimately promote a more equitable and diverse future generation of professional software developers while also fostering computational thinking, encouraging a broader interest in programming among all young learners.}, subject = {Softwareentwicklung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Hofer2024, author = {Hofer, Denise}, title = {Die Implementierung Inklusiver Begabungsf{\"o}rderung - Eine Interventionsstudie zur Implementierung Inklusiver Begabungsf{\"o}rderung in Niederbayern}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15065}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {315 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {In der vorliegenden Forschungsarbeit wird das zweij{\"a}hrige Pilotprojekt „BegIN-Begabungsf{\"o}rderung in Niederbayern" wissenschaftlich begleitet. Im Zuge des Implementierungsprojekts werden Kriterien f{\"u}r ein Begabungssiegel entwickelt, mit dem die neun teilnehmenden Pilotprojektschulen f{\"u}r drei Jahre zertifiziert werden sollen. Um die Lehrpersonen bei der Unterrichtsentwicklung zu unterst{\"u}tzen, wird mit Lehrer:innenfortbildungen interveniert. Alle Schulleiter:innen der teilnehmenden Pilotprojektschulen und ein Vertreter der Schulbeh{\"o}rde werden in zwei Erhebungszeitr{\"a}umen um ihre Einsch{\"a}tzungen bez{\"u}glich ihres Begriffsverst{\"a}ndnisses, ihrer Erwartungshaltungen, der auftretenden Herausforderungen und der notwendigen Rahmenbedingungen interviewt. Zus{\"a}tzlich werden die Lehrpersonen der teilnehmenden Pilotprojektschulen ebenfalls zu zwei Zeitpunkten in einem Abstand von einem Jahr quantitativ zu ihren subjektiven Einsch{\"a}tzungen bez{\"u}glich der Umsetzung von Inklusiver Begabungsf{\"o}rderung befragt. Es werden im Rahmen dieser Arbeit zahlreiche f{\"o}rderliche und einige hemmende Einflussfaktoren bei der Implementierung Inklusiver Begabungsf{\"o}rderung untersucht, die Schulen in ihren Entwicklungsprozessen im Kontext Inklusiver Begabungsf{\"o}rderung miteinbeziehen und ber{\"u}cksichtigt k{\"o}nnen. Dadurch kann Inklusive Begabungsf{\"o}rderung allen Sch{\"u}ler:innen zugute kommen.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Felfeli2024, author = {Felfeli, Anna}, title = {Sozialkonstruktivistische Außenpolitikforschung im nationalen, bilateralen und regionalen Handlungskontext - Die Aussagekraft von M{\"o}glichkeitsr{\"a}umen}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15038}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {197 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Die publikationsbasierte Dissertationsschrift besteht aus vier Einzelpublikationen und einem Manteltext. Letzterer widmet sich der theoretischen Erfassung von M{\"o}glichkeitsr{\"a}umen in der Außenpolitik. In theoriegeleiteten Fallstudien analysiert die Arbeit den Zusammenhang zwischen Identit{\"a}ten, Diskursen und Verhaltensweisen mit dem Ziel, außenpolitische M{\"o}glichkeitsr{\"a}ume in unterschiedlichen Handlungskontexten zu ermitteln. Das im Mantelteil neu generierte Modell zur Erforschung dieser M{\"o}glichkeitsr{\"a}ume {\"u}berspannt die verschiedenen Theorien der Einzelbeitr{\"a}ge und zeigt so den Mehrwert einer konstitutiven sozialkonstruktivistischen Außenpolitiktheorie auf. Im Modell werden die folgenden drei Analysefelder herausgearbeitet: 1) Historische Vorstudie, 2) Fallspezifische Diskursanalyse und 3) Konstitutive Wirkungen. Anhand der Fallstudien wird dargelegt, wie der außenpolitische Rechtfertigungsdiskurs die Identit{\"a}t und damit den M{\"o}glichkeitsraum des Akteurs entweder reproduziert, erweitert oder durchbricht und welche konkreten Implikationen dies f{\"u}r den aktuellen und zuk{\"u}nftigen Handlungsspielraum in der Außenpolitik hat. Im Ergebnis k{\"o}nnen unter Anwendung des Modells die langfristigen Wirkungen von politischen Reaktionen auf Krisenereignisse differenziert bewertet werden. Dies f{\"u}hrt zu einem besseren Verst{\"a}ndnis von Nachhaltigkeit in der Außenpolitik und legt dar, dass sozialkonstruktivistische Außenpolitikforschung in der Lage ist, {\"u}ber die Gegenwart hinaus Aussagen {\"u}ber das zu erwartende Verhalten von Staaten in einem bestimmten Handlungskontext abzugeben.}, subject = {Konstruktivismus }, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Berger2024, author = {Berger, Christian}, title = {Towards Fast and Adaptive Byzantine State Machine Replication for Planetary-Scale Systems}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15059}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {ix, 181 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {State machine replication (SMR) is a classical approach for building resilient distributed systems. In Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) systems, no concrete assumptions are made about the behavior of faulty replicas. With the advancement of distributed ledger technologies (DLT), planetary-scale BFT SMR ist becoming practical and necessary as it can serve as a consensus primitive to keep the ledger consistent. In our view, the alignment of BFT SMR to DLT brings new challenges, for instance the scalability aspect, where recent research works less frequently address latency improvements than throughput improvements. Further challenges include the geographic dispersion of replicas within a planetary-scale system and the need of a BFT SMR protocol to react to environmental changes during runtime. This thesis has the objective to improve BFT SMR for planetary-scale systems by lowering the protocol latency observed by clients and by making the BFT SMR system adaptive, i.e., enabling replicas to react to perceived changes such as changing network characteristics or faulty replicas. As a first contribution of this thesis, we discover that fast, consensus-free (read-only) operations is a flawed optimization in seminal BFT SMR frameworks, such as PBFT and BFT-SMaRt. We explain how the read-only optimization can violate the protocol's liveness by showing an attack and then present a solution that makes the overall, optimized protocol both live and linearizable. The second contribution is Adaptive Wide-Area Replication (AWARE), which enables a geo-replicated system to adapt to its environment, thus improving the geographical scalability of consensus if replicas are dispersed across the world. Essentially, AWARE is an automated and dynamic voting-weight tuning and leader positioning scheme, which supports the emergence of fast consensus quorums in the system and builds upon previous work, the WHEAT protocol. AWARE combines reliable self-monitoring with a consensus latency prediction model, thus striving to minimize the system's consensus latency at runtime, which subsequently results in latency improvements observed by clients scattered across the globe, which we validate through experiments. The third contribution presents FlashConsensus, a protocol derived from AWARE, that also adjusts the resilience threshold. The core idea is the tentative use of a lower resilience threshold which leads to smaller consensus quorums and thus consensus acceleration in common-case scenarios where we expect only few faulty replicas. FlashConsensus achieves threat-level awareness through the incorporation of two modes of operation and BFT forensic support and guarantees liveness and linearizability under optimal resilience. Moreover, FlashConsensus allows for client-side speculation by using incremental consistency guarantees to further lower request latency. Additionally, we investigate on the question whether we can reason about the performance of large-scale systems utilizing simulations. We discover, that we can faithfully forecast the performance of BFT protocols by plugging real protocol implementations into a high-performance network simulator. For instance, simulation results reveal that, using 51 replicas scattered across the planet, FlashConsensus can finalize operations in less than 0.4 s, which is half of the time required for a PBFT-like protocol in the same network, and matching the latency of this protocol running on the best possible internet links (transmitting at 67\% of the speed of light).}, language = {en} }