Lukas Erhard

Hello and welcome! I am Lukas Erhard, a interdisciplinary PhD student at the University of Stuttgart with a deep interest in the intersection of social sciences and computational methods. I currently work ath the Interchange Forum for Reflecting on Intelligent Systems (SRF IRIS) and in the Department for Computational Social Science (CSS).

Current research

My research revolves around integrating machine learning techniques into social science research processes. By leveraging computational methods, I aim to uncover new insights into complex social phenomena and enhance our understanding of various societal issues.

I am currently working on my dissertation, in which I am dealing with the automatic detection of populism in German politics. The first of three studies on this topic has now been published. The second article, in which I examine the prevalence of populism on the YouTube channels of German parties, is currently in the process of being written.

During the development of the Transformer model for the automated detection of populism, it turned out that the annotation of somewhat diffuse social science constructs is not that easy and that annotators are also often unsure and make mistakes. That's why I'm also working on an annotation platform that allows annotators to discuss their annotations and should make the annotation process much more robust.

Furthermore, the question arises as to whether we still need human encoders at all, or whether current generative AI models can't already do our work for us anyway. I am working on another article that will examine whether and, if so, in which areas, current GenAI models can do our work for us.

Previous research

• Interdisciplinarity in Early Career Research: In collaboration with colleagues, I have investigated the benefits and drawbacks of interdisciplinary research for young scholars. Our study, published in PLOS ONE, reveals that while interdisciplinary research can enhance recognition in fields like physics, it may have different impacts in disciplines such as psychology.

• Mass Media and Immigration Concerns: Another significant area of my research examines how media discourse influences attitudes towards immigration. By analyzing a vast dataset of German newspaper articles, our study has provided new evidence on how specific media topics affect public concerns about immigration.

About this page

Since I enjoy playing with technology as part of my job, this website is primarily a playground for me to try out new web technologies. Nevertheless, you can find all the necessary information about me and my work here.