Bachelor's Thesis
Award for the Best ZuWi II Bachelor Thesis
The Department of Socioeconomics has initiated the Award for the Best ZuWi II Bachelor Thesis in order to give visibility to excellent Bachelor theses written on topics relating to Sustainable Economics and Business II. The award is intended to encourage students enrolled in the bachelor program Business Administration to engage with socio-economic topics of sustainability in their bachelor theses and to explore economic activities, which are linked to social and ecological factors. After all, sustainability has many facets and opens up numerous exciting fields of research.
2022 Award for the Best ZuWi II Bachelor Thesis
This year, the jury, comprised of Karl-Michael Brunner, Felix Butzlaff and Birgit Hollaus, presented the award to a bachelor thesis which focuses on microtargeting
“Political microtargeting: a threat to the democratic process? An analysis based on the example of Cambridge Analytica." (transl. from German: "Politisches Microtargeting: Eine Gefahr für den demokratischen Prozess? Eine Analyse anhand des Beispiels Cambridge Analytica.“)
by Christoph Wolf
Microtargeting is considered a socio-economic topic of high social and political relevance. From the jury's point of view, the topic was dealt with in a high-quality manner. The identified issue is addressed in a very comprehensible manner, with the author using a wide range of socioeconomic literature for the underlying argumentation. In addition, it also draws attention to the social dimension of the conclusions.
In the interview below, the awardee, Christoph Wolf, provides a more detailed account of his thesis and describes his motivation for writing on this timely topic.
The Program Coordination team warmly congratulates the winner on this achievement!
Christoph Wolf's thesis was supervised by Daniel Hausknost and Mirijam Mock, both from the Institute for Social Change and Sustainability. This is what the colleagues say about the supervision process:
"Christian Wolf's thesis deals with a very current socio-economic topic, which we also deal with in our research at the institute. In supervising the bachelor thesis, it was not only the content that was exciting for us, though. Christian approached the topic very independently on the basis of numerous recognized scientific sources, many of them in English. He was thus able to determine a clear focus for his enquiry and did not get lost in irrelevant details. In the end, he managed to present the complex interrelationships dominating the topic on a more abstract level, but also broke them down to concrete case studies. We were very happy to have supported him on this path." - Daniel Hausknost and Mirijam Mock
Christoph Wolf: Political microtargeting: a threat to the democratic process? An analysis based on the example of Cambridge Analytica.
Christoph Wolf's thesis focuses on the phenomenon of microtargeting, a communication strategy that is increasingly appearing in the context of political discourse. He pays particular attention to the different effects of microtargeting as well as the legal framework. The theoretical discussion of the phenomenon is complemented by an analysis of the Cambridge Analytica case study, which has a high media presence. Mr. Wolf concludes that political microtargeting does indeed have the potential to influence the perception of voters. However, it remains an open question whether the free formation of opinions will be influenced negatively or positively in the future.