Addressing “the ones behind”: Public responses to technologies and the role of responsibility

This paper advances a broadened understanding of technology acceptance by introducing the concept of the acceptance object responsible – the actors and institutions accountable for technological design, implementation, and governance. Traditional approaches have focused on the dyad of acceptance subject and object; we argue that social (non-)acceptance fundamentally targets actors behind technology decisions. Acceptance thus emerges as a relational and communicative process embedded in contexts of trust, fairness, and legitimacy. Building on a critical review of existing technology acceptance literature, we identify the neglect of responsibility as a crucial conceptual gap. To address this gap, we propose a triad comprising acceptance subject, object, and its responsibles. Technologies thereby function as proxies or mediating reference points through which broader evaluations of responsibility, accountability, and legitimacy are articulated. Public support or opposition is thus less a direct reaction to the intrinsic properties of a technology than an expression of confidence or distrust in the governance arrangements, communications, and decision-making of the actors (perceived as) responsible for making crucial decisions on development, implementation, and management. Thus, our main argument which we will lay out in this paper is the following: (non-)acceptance judgments address primarily technology related decisions of corresponding technology responsibles – that is of addressing “the ones behind”.