Here you can browse through the list of projects in which M²P is involved.
Climate Policy Support and the role of Information
Lack of public support for drastic measures to address climate change is a core problem for climate policy today. In this PhD project, I study Belgian public opinion with regard to climate change and climate change policies, with special attention for the crucial role of (correct, effective) information. This project consists of four studies that are integrated and build on one another in a cumulative fashion. (1) Through the use of a survey, I look at the sources of information (traditional media, social media and interpersonal network) people use to inform themselves about climate change and climate change policy; I correlate media use with individuals' climate knowledge, attitudes and behaviour and build a typology of population segments based on their climate predispositions. (2) The climate policy frames used by policy makers and political actors are examined by means of a content analysis; I look at arguments used in party manifestos, government agreements, newspapers and on Twitter. (3) I investigate the effect of (counter) frames on climate policy support by way of a series of survey-embedded experiments that treat subjects with a variation of single frames and counter frames, with combinations of frames and counter frames, and with a variation of senders of the frames. (4) I examine whether framing effects are conditioned by individuals' social group identification, both partisan and broader, and their climate predispositions.
Researchers:
Marthe Walgrave (PhD student)
Peter Van Aelst (promotor)
Funding:
Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)
Countering Foreign Interference
Our contribution in this larger project focuses on providing and operationalising a strategic framework to appraise the evolving nature of information manipulation and interference across countries, with particular emphasis on the implications for EU external action across priority regions. Analysis and activities produced under this work package will cover the following core pillars: 1) target countries; 2) foreign actors; 3) information incidents. 1) Target Countries. This pillar assesses the overall resilience of individual countries to FIMI, across three progressive levels: (1) macro (societal cohesion, stability and state legitimacy), (2) meso (political information environment), and (3) micro (personal resilience). 2) Foreign Actors. This pillar assesses the level of interest interfering foreign actors (e.g. Russia, China, …) have in conducting FIMI operations in each target country, as well as how capable these foreign actors are of conducting information manipulation in each country. 3) Information Incidents. This pillar serves as the main forecasting component of the framework. Information incidents are understood as events which are likely to lead to an increase in FIMI. Examples include upcoming elections or ongoing public health crises.
Researchers:
Peter Van Aelst (promotor)
Ludovic Terren (post-doctoral researcher)
Funding:
European Commission
Dynamic Interplay between Public Approval Polls and Politicians’ Behaviour
Public opinion has a substantial impact on politicians, yet the intricate dynamic between both remains poorly understood. This raises a fundamental question: If politicians genuinely respond to public opinion, as scholars suggest, how can we explain widespread citizens' dissatisfaction with politics? This research project aims to unravel this puzzle by adopting a novel approach, looking into the interplay between public approval polls and politicians' online behaviour on social media. Specifically, the project involves hiring student coders to analyse politicians' Facebook posts before and after the release of public approval polls to (i) understand how polls (t-1) influence politicians' behaviour (t) and, consequently, (ii) how politicians' behaviour (t) influences subsequent public approval (t+1). Ultimately, this research endeavour will enhance our understanding of the relationship between the public and politicians, offering insights into how to address challenges facing modern democracies.
Researchers:
Željko Poljak (post-doc)
Funding:
BOF (UA)
Electronic News Archive
The ENA archives and encodes various Flemish news broadcasts, current affair programs and newspapers, and provides this data to the Flemish research community. Both audiovisual material and metadata are available upon request. The dataset spans from 2003 to the present and is updated with the most recent data every quarter. Professors, researchers, and students from universities and colleges, journalists, teachers, interested individuals from civil society, and the government can make use of the ENA data. The Electronic News Archive is intended for scientific use.
Researchers within this project examine the current state of Flemish news content. They investigate, among other aspects, the extent of representation of different actors and the topics being discussed. The ENA serves as a fundamental tool for various journalism researchers. For example, it forms the basis of projects which explores the quality of news media (Cato Depauw), look into actor diversity in the news (Elif Kilik) and to analyze the political impartiality of news media and its perception (Hanne Tillemans).
Researchers:
Peter Van Aelst (promotor)
Stefaan Walgrave (promotor)
Funding:
The Flemish Government
First aid in case of doubt
This project aims to support editors, journalists and organizations to deal more efficiently with disinformation and to respond more quickly in a digital environment in which it is becoming easy to spread disinformation on a daily basis. We also want to teach news users how to deal with disinformation in a more resilient way. The project is a collaboration between news organizations (VRT, Roularta), the universities of Leuven, Brussels and Antwerp, and Textgain. The 'First Aid in case of doubt' project focuses on digital resilience against disinformation, as does developing new formats to reach them with fact checks, on the right platform and in the right form. In addition, the project develops tools to detect doubts, to speed up fact-checking processes and to be able to create these new formats. The project aims to map out who the Flemish people are who doubt the information they see, for example on their social media, and who are thrown off balance as a result. We investigate who those people are, but also what they need to know whether messages they see are real and correct or not. We want to investigate on which platforms, for example, there is the greatest need for fact checks and in what form.
Researchers:
Peter Van Aelst (promotor)
Funding:
BOF (UA)
“First we go viral, then we sway the public”: How Protest Affects Public Opinion in the Hybrid Media System
How does protest affect public opinion in the hybrid media system? The past decade, social media have become a key instrument in protest movements’ toolbox. To date, however, little work has thoroughly scrutinized how social media have altered movements’ ability to generate attention and sway public opinion. This project asks: How do movements navigate social media to win the public’s interest? To what extent and when do protests resonate on social media? And, how do protests affect individuals’ perceptions via online messaging?
Researchers:
Luna Staes (PhD student)
Stefaan Walgrave (promotor)
Ruud Wouters (promotor)
Funding:
Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)
How politicians evaluate public opinion (POLPOP II)
The project aims to examine how politicians appraise public opinion. For instance, do politicians think that people have carefully thought-out opinions, or that their opinions are mostly driven by self-interest? By examining how politicians assess public opinion – be it positively or negatively – and how that assessment ultimately affects their actions and policies, this research may lead to a shift in the way people think about democratic representation.
Researchers:
Stefaan Walgrave (principle investigator)
Julie Sevenans (post-doctoral researcher)
Evelien Willems (post-doctoral researcher)
Karolin Soontjens (post-doctoral researcher)
Anam Kuraishi (post-doctoral researcher)
Chris Butler (post-doctoral researcher)
Nino Junius (post-doctoral researcher)
Philippe Mongrain (post-doctoral researcher)
Emmi Verleyen (PhD student)
Arno Jansen (PhD student)
Bart Maes (PhD student)
Period:
January 2022- Januruary 2027
Funding:
European Research Council - ERC
Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)
'I represent the people, and my opponent does not!' The effects of representative claims on citizens' feeling of being (un)represented.
Many studies examine popular resentment with politics. It seems that citizens have the feeling that they are not properly being represented by the politicians and parties they elect. One should ask, where do these feelings come from? In this project, I argue that we might find part of the explanation in politicians' communication, particularly, in the representative claims they make. Politicians claim to represent others every day (e.g. I represent women) and claim that other politicians do not (e.g. He does not represent the people). Being mentioned as 'the represented' might make some people feel well-represented, while others might feel ignored (or relatively deprived) and therefore feel unrepresented. Yet, at present, very little to no research has defined what it means to feel (un)represented, let alone measured the concept. Similarly, little empirical research has been done on politicians' representative claims. Consequently, we know close to nothing about the possible effects of these claims on the extent to which people feel (un)represented by politicians and their parties. This project aims to tackle these gaps in literature in three steps. First, by operationalizing and measuring 'feeling (un)represented'. Second, by measuring and analyzing the various claims Flemish politicians make. Lastly, the two first studies will serve as necessary input to experimentally test the effects of representative claims on citizens' feeling of being (un)represented.
Researchers:
August De Mulder (PhD student)
Stefaan Walgrave (promotor)
Walter Daelemans (co-promotor)
Funding:
BOF (UA)
Learning about the world in the digital information age. Causes of and solutions for uninformed, selectively informed and misinformed young citizens (POLKNOW)
POLKNOW is an inter-university iBOF project in which two Belgian university teams collaborate (i.e. UA & KUL). It is a project that aims to study the acquisition of political knowledge via starting from the assumption that political knowledge is a key feature of a healthy democracy. The project aims to assess the quality of political information in a changing digital information environment, via exploring the origins of uninformed, misinformed or selectively informed citizens. The project not only aims to better understand the causes of lacking, inaccurate or biased political knowledge, but it also examines the knowledge gain effects of possible solutions. POLKNOW studies a set of key strategies to ameliorate negative consequences of lack of or deficient media and information use. In thinking about solutions and their impact we focus on young citizens as they may be most susceptible to detrimental media effects, but they might also benefit most from solution-oriented approaches. These solutions will be developed in three subprojects each dealing with a specific case of learning about politics and society amongst youth and adults, i.e. (1) Voting Advice Applications (VAAs); (2) Fact-checks on social media; (3) Influencers.
Principal investigators:
Researchers (M2P team):
Funding:
I-BOF (UA; KU Leuven)
Mechanisms of Protest (MECPRO)
Abstract:
Protest participation is increasing globally. How come? This project adds to solving the protest puzzle by scrutinizing the individual-level mechanisms that lead some to participate in a specific protest event whereas others do not. Two research strategies have been employed to investigate protest participation so far. General population surveys compare participants with non-participants but fail to account for issue effects and for the micro- context in which people decide to participate or not. Other scholars have resorted to using protest surveys—interviewing participants during the act of protest. Typically, this produces evidence rich in context but without the crucial comparison with non-participants. In this project, we combine the best of both worlds. We study mobilization within a delineated population and interview people before and after their possible participation. As such, we generate context-specific data about both participants and non-participants. Theoretically, we consider protest participation as a step-by-step process consisting of four stages. Individuals need to (1) agree with the protest claims, (2) need to be recruited, (3) motivated and (4) overcome practical barriers. In this integrative model, we incorporate mobilization theories and lay bare the individual-level mechanisms that drive protest participation. Concretely, via a panel design, we map the trajectories of potential participants in four specific mobilization campaigns.
Researchers:
Stefaan Walgrave (Promotor)
Michiel De Vydt (PhD Student)
Period:
October 2015 - September 2021
Funding:
FWO (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek)
Monitoring VRT News Impartiality
The Flemish media and especially the VRT are expected to report impartially in their news and current affairs programmes. According to the Flemish coalition agreement, the VRT's news programs must be monitored for pluralism and neutrality. This study aims to do this by comparing the coverage of the VRT over time and with other media. We are relying on the experience of 18 years of news monitoring by the still ongoing Electronic News Archive (ENA). In concrete terms, the study consists of three parts: (1) An extensive reporting of actors and themes in the main news of Eén, in which the 7 pm VTM newscast will be taken as a point of comparison. (2) An extensive reporting of actors and themes in the current affairs programs on VRT. (3) The detailed coding of three cases (topics/events) in which all news on a wide range of platforms and media (not only VRT) is analyzed.
Researchers:
Peter Van Aelst (promotor)
Stefaan Walgrave (co-promotor)
Funding:
VRM – Flemish Government
Politicians as opinion leaders
Abstract:
This project puts the role of politicians as opinion leaders central. The new digital media environment has given politicians more tools to influence, both directly and indirectly, people's consumption and interpretation of news and information on current affairs. We will study what news stories politicians share on social media and how this affects their followers and public opinion in general. First, politicians can influence to what extent people trust mainstream and alternative media. By sharing and commenting on the content of news stories on social media, politicians can help disseminate their messages, circumventing the gatekeeping role of the media. This influence can enhance the trust in (alternative/partisan) media outlets, but also damage the media's reputation as a democratic institution. Second, politicians can promote more extreme views and opinions, and contribute to the polarization of their audience. Ultimately, politicians, by acting as opinion leaders, may contribute to their followers getting stuck in so-called 'echo chambers' of like-minded information. We will use a multi-method approach (content analysis, user engagement analysis, survey, experiment) to study the news sharing behavior of politicians and its effects on their followers in Belgium (Flanders), the Netherlands, and the UK.
Researchers: Willem Buyens (PhD Student) and Peter Van Aelst (Promotor)
Period: 01/01/2021 - 31/12/2024
RadoNorm
The RadoNorm project aims at managing risk from radon and NORM exposure situations to assure effective radiation protection based on improved scientific evidence and social considerations.
RadoNorm is designed to initiate and perform research and technical development in support of European Union Member States, Associated Countries and the European Commission in their efforts to implement the European radiation protection Basic Safety Standards. The multidisciplinary and inclusive research project targets all relevant steps of the radiation risk management cycle for radon and NORM exposure situations (exposure, dosimetry, effects and risks, mitigation, and societal aspects).
The work package on societal aspects is developing and testing: 1) an open source social science toolbox of qualitative and quantitative methods to study the socio-psychological situation (views, attitudes and behaviours) of affected populations and stakeholders, 2) health communication tools, strategies and methods to bridge the gap between awareness of risks and radiation protection behaviour, 3) citizen science initiatives to analyse the effect of citizen participation and institutional empowerment on radiation protection, and much more.
Researchers:
Tanja Perko (work package coordinator)
Peter Thijssen (researcher)
Melisa Muric (PhD student)
Period: 1/9/2020-31/8/2025
Funding: European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM Horizon 2020, GA No: 900009)
Research Centre on Representatives and their Communication (RCRC)
In a context of, across Western democracies, an increasing popular dissatisfaction with political representation, PREPINTACT examines the beliefs, attitudes and behavior of three types of individual intermediary actors— politicians, interest group leaders and journalists—in tandem with the parallel beliefs, attitudes and behavior of ordinary citizens. It argues that in order to get a better grip on how representation works, we need to focus on individual intermediaries. We examine the up- and downstream flows of information that form the core of representation and that connect society with the government system. PREPINTACT has a special interest in political inequality and hypothesizes that disadvantaged societal groups are less adequately represented. Within that general framework, the consortium launches a number of specific, comparative research projects using a range of methods combining social science (experiments, surveys, interviews…) with computational linguistics approaches. The concrete projects look into the accuracy of intermediaries' perception of public opinion, the social bias in their personal networks, the selective communication to their voters/members/audience, the role of social media in reinforcing their attitudes, how they represent within their organizations (parties, media organizations...) etc. Taken together, these projects constitute a never seen, in-depth analysis of how individual intermediaries make representative democracy work (or not).
Researchers:
Stefaan Walgrave (promotor)
Walter Daelemans (co-promotor)
Steve Paulussen (co-promotor)
Peter Van Aelst (co-promotor)
Željko Poljak (post-doc)
Yannick Léonard (PhD student)
Funding:
BOF (UA)
The perception of differentness, polarization amongst citizens and dissatisfaction with representatives (NOTLIKEUS)
The project examines an hitherto under-examined driver of two of the main problems representative democracies are wrestling with: horizontal affective polarization among citizens and vertical political dissatisfaction with politicians. The ‘new’ driver is the perception that other-minded citizens and other-minded politicians are not only politically different—they have other political preferences—but that they also are different human beings with different social, cultural and economic features. Ingroup-outgroup mechanisms make that such broad perceptions of differences lead to deepening intergroup animus. Although the theoretical logic of perceptual differences deepening dislike of others is not new, it has never been applied empirically to the study of horizontal polarization and vertical dissatisfaction. NOTLIKEUS engages in a broad and encompassing research program that (1) describes and conceptualizes citizens’ perception of differentness of other-minded citizens/politicians, (2) examines its causes, (3) analyses its effect on polarization and dissatisfaction, (4) investigates its ultimate effect on anti-democratic behaviour, and (5) explores possible solutions to the negative fall-out of high levels of perception of differentness. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative methods, the project examines the Belgian case, a case that is suitable both theoretically and empirically.
Principal investigator:
Researchers (M2P team):
Ine Goovaerts (post-doctoral researcher)
Artemis Tsoulou-Malakoudi (PhD student)
Jochem Vanagt (PhD student)
Funding:
Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) - EOS
The road to advocacy success: Analyzing the mechanisms shaping issue-specific interactions among interest groups and policymakers
Interest groups often play a key role in public policymaking. The lengthy and complex nature of many policy processes, however, means that interest groups typically have to overcome various hurdles to gain influence. Next to agenda-setting success, groups must be effective advocates in several decision-making venues. This project proposes a novel analytical framework connecting interest group literature with social movement studies to (1) analyze intermittent advocacy successes, both in terms of attracting attention for issue priorities and attaining policy positions; and (2) assess the moderating effects of politicization and public opinion on how advocacy shapes the course of policy processes. The project conceptualizes the policy process as a sequence of distinct episodes characterized by whether and how interest groups and policymakers interact among each other and thereby shape the final policy outcome. Empirically, news media and policy content analyses are combined with elite interviews to construct a timeline of interactions between interest groups and policymakers on a medium-N of issues spanning the 2014-2024 Belgian legislative periods. Methodologically, time series and qualitative comparative analysis methods will be used to dissect interaction processes and link them to advocacy successes.
Researchers:
Evelien Willems (post-doctoral researcher)
Stefaan Walgrave (promotor)
Period:
01/10/2021 – 30/09/2024
Funding:
Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)
The Threats and Potentials of a Changing Political Information Environment (THREATPIE)
This project examines how the current changes in the political information environments in European democracies affect the conditions for a healthy democracy and civil society. As a theoretical background we employ the concept of 'political information environment' that includes both the supply and demand of political news and information. Supply refers to the quantity and quality of news and public affairs content provided through traditional and new media sources, demand deals with the amount and type of news and information the public wants or is able to consume. In particular, the study aims at investigating the following: (1) how do citizens gain political information in the complex media environment, what are their attitudes toward information sources, and what is the relationship between these attitudes and political attitudes and behaviour; (2) what is the content and quality of information citizens are exposed to; (3) where do divides between being informed and not being informed exist, across and within European societies, and (4) how can citizens be equipped to navigate and find new and valuable information. We will do this through a series of comparative, innovatively designed studies, including web tracking, comparative surveys, focus groups and survey-imbedded experiments in 15 countries: Germany, Spain, Poland, UK, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, Romania, and the US. These countries vary on a number of key contextual factors relevant for the study, covering "young" and "new" democracies with different political heritages, democratic traditions, media systems, and news consumption habits.
Researchers:
Peter Van Aelst (promotor)
Patrick van Erkel
Understanding inequality in political representation
Abstract:
A key challenge facing representative democracies today is inequality in political representation. Research has shown that political decision-making is less responsive to the preferences of poorer, lower-educated and female citizens than to those of the rich, the higher-educated and of men. This project builds on these findings and makes two contributions. First, it breaks new ground by empirically accounting for the different ways in which “good representation” can come about. Politicians may represent citizens well by listening to what they want (their ‘a priori’ preferences), or by taking unpopular decisions in citizens’ best interests and then explaining these decisions well (aiming for ‘a posteriori’ approval). This project considers both, as a more full-fledged test of unequal representation. Second, the project sheds light on the mechanisms that cause unequal representation. Inequalities may arise when politicians lack information about what disadvantaged groups want (citizens are poorly understood) or when they lack the motivation to be responsive (groups are deliberately disregarded). These mechanisms will be disentangled here by studying the underlying cognitive processes directly. Concretely, the project combines (1) an analysis of public opinion and policy with (2) a large-scale public opinion survey on ‘a posteriori’ policy approval and (3) a survey, experiment and interview with politicians. The results will help to fight inequality more effectively.
Researcher: Julie Sevenans (post-doctoral researcher)
Funding: FWO