A new cross‑country study suggests that public opinion toward major technology companies is not a simple spectrum of support or opposition. The research, published in Research and Politics, finds that higher levels of education are linked to mixed, ambivalent views of Big Tech rather than outright enthusiasm.
The study focuses on the six-country survey and the attitudes toward global technology firms such as Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft. Beyond consumer products, the firms’ control over core digital infrastructure means they now shape information access, decision‑making in public life and the development of emerging tools like artificial intelligence, prompting regulators to weigh tighter controls against the promise of continued growth.
Political scientists have long examined shifts in work and voter behaviour as digital change proceeds, but this work is among the first to probe how the public evaluates the corporations at the heart of that shift. Earlier literature noted that automation and digitalisation can create economic winners and losers, sometimes correlating with political dispositions; the new study seeks to see if those patterns extend to attitudes toward the firms themselves.
Led by Tobias Tober of the University of Konstanz, with colleagues including Marius R. Busemeyer and Sebastian Koos, the researchers hypothesised that education and ideology would shape opinions in distinctive ways. They argued that, in knowledge economies, university graduates typically enjoy stronger job prospects and greater digital familiarity, which could translate into positive views of Big Tech—but the reality proved more nuanced.
To test their ideas, the researchers commissioned Kantar Public to collect data in June and July 2022 across Germany, Japan, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United States. The sample comprised 3,300 adults aged 18 to 64 in each country, totalling 19,800 respondents, with quota sampling based on age, gender and education to mirror national populations.
Participants rated their agreement with six statements about the societal role of global technology firms on a five‑point scale. Three statements captured positive contributions—providing useful services to the public, promoting innovation and economic development, and aiding democracy by offering a digital space for open debate. The other three reflected negative impacts—undermining the welfare state by avoiding taxes, weakening labour standards, and becoming so powerful that they threaten democracy.
The researchers used exploratory factor analysis to identify patterns in responses. Rather than a single scale from positive to negative, the analysis revealed two largely independent dimensions: people’s positive assessments of Big Tech did not strongly predict their negative views.
Using k‑means clustering, the team grouped the 19,800 respondents into five profiles. The largest group was the neutral cluster (8,140), comprising individuals who neither agreed nor disagreed with most statements. The ambivalent cluster (5,114) contained respondents who agreed with both positive and negative statements simultaneously. The remaining groups were Big Tech supporters (3,739), skeptics (2,123) and a small dismissive group (685) that disagreed with both sets of statements.
When the researchers examined how education and ideology predicted cluster membership, the results persisted after accounting for income and cross‑country differences, and even when factoring in technology use at home and at work. Education was categorised into three levels, from lower secondary to university degrees, while political ideology was measured on an 11‑point left–right scale.
Contrary to expectations, higher education did not yield a large rise in outright support. Moving from the lowest to the highest education level increased the predicted probability of being a supporter by about 3 percentage points and the probability of being a skeptic by about 2 points. Instead, the ambivalent group became more common with higher education, rising from 22 per cent among the less educated to 33 per cent among university graduates, while the neutral group fell from 43 per cent to 30 per cent.
Ideology also split respondents in meaningful ways. Those in the political centre were most likely to belong to the neutral group. Moving from centre to far left raised the predicted probability of being a skeptic by around 10 percentage points, while moving from centre to far right raised scepticism by about 6 percentage points and ambivalence by roughly 10 percentage points. The general pattern held across the six countries, with some national variation.
The study also explored how education and ideology interacted. Among university‑educated citizens, left‑leaning individuals showed the sharpest drop in neutrality and an increase in scepticism. Among the highly educated on the right, support for Big Tech declined while ambivalence rose—by about 16 percentage points from centre to far right—perhaps reflecting tensions between pro‑market outlooks and concerns about culture and speech online.
Policy preferences offered another window into these profiles. Across the full sample, 38 per cent favoured stronger regulation of Big Tech, 20 per cent opposed it and 42 per cent were undecided. In terms of backing for government support or economic/political backing for the companies, 32 per cent supported more backing, 19 per cent opposed it and 49 per cent were undecided.
Disaggregated by profile, the findings aligned closely with attitudes. Skeptics overwhelmingly backed stricter regulation (82 per cent) and opposed government support (65 per cent), while supporters showed little appetite for regulation (23 per cent in favour) and leaned toward backing (40 per cent). Ambivalents tended to want both regulation and government support (72 per cent and 46 per cent, respectively).
The researchers note that their findings resonate with other work covered by this publication on technology and regulation, including studies on artificial intelligence and media sentiment. They caution that the cross‑sectional design cannot establish causality or track shifts following rapid advances in generative AI, and that the sample excludes older age groups for whom attitudes may differ.
The authors—Tobias Tober, Marius R. Busemeyer and Sebastian Koos—state that education can act as a proxy for political awareness, meaning highly educated individuals may encounter competing arguments about both the benefits and dangers of digital platforms. Rather than settling on a single, clear stance, they may absorb diverse viewpoints, resulting in ambivalence that defies simple categorisation.
The study, titled “Big Tech, big risk? How education and ideology shape public attitudes toward Big Tech companies,” highlights how education and ideology interact to shape public opinion and regulatory preferences, while also underlining the complexity of attitudes toward the firms at the heart of the digital economy.
