digilog@bw—Dynamics of Participation in the Era of Digitalisation

This project studied the effects of online behaviour on political attitudes and participation. While the initial aims of the project included the analysis of bottom-up and top-down relationships in the process of agenda setting, these had to be re-adapted due to the Covid-19 pandemic being the main political and social concern during two of the three years of the project. Thus, the project investigated the extent to which online behaviour moderates the impact of external shocks such as a pandemic or the war in Ukraine on political preferences. In this respect, this research also approached the question of how an information diets affect attitudes towards vaccination and disinformation.

Between November 2020 and October 2021, we ran a 3-wave panel survey with more than 3,200 respondents and more than 1,000 final participants. In May/June 2022, we launched our cross-section survey in which we included, among others, questions about sexism, climate change, the war in Ukraine, and the experience of remote work. Around 1,800 persons participated in this study. Finally, in November/December 2022, we ran an online survey experiment with around 3,000 participants. All these datasets are publicly available at the GESIS archive.

Our results highlight the importance of disinformation and information diet in shaping political preferences and attitudes. Several papers using these data are in preparation or have been submitted to scientific journals. Results were presented at the Digilog colloquiums, the EPSA Conference, and at the DVPW Congress. Researchers of the project also wrote blog articles and disseminated preliminary results of the project to the public by participating in events of the digilog@bw consortium.