Political Participation and the New (and Not So New) Social Media

Abstract

In the election campaigns of the last decade, the Internet offered new possibilities for political information and participation. The panel focuses on specific Internet tools – so called Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) – that help voters to collect and process relevant information about salient topics in the election campaign. These tools have experienced a considerable spread and demand in Europe. For example: During the 2010 electoral campaign in the Netherlands the “Stemwijzer” provided 4.2 million voting advices, in 2011 the Swiss VAA “smartvote” was used one million times, and in Germany the “Wahl-O-Mat” generated 6.7 million voting advices for the 2009 German Federal Election. VAAs share a basic functionality: They compare the policy positions of voters with those of the parties or candidates running for election. After voters have marked their positions on a list of policy proposals, VAAs compare their answer patterns with the patterns of the parties/candidates indicating which party or candidate has the highest degree of proximity to the users’ positions. Recent studies have shown first evidence that using these tools seems to have an impact on the individual voting intention and electoral choice, but also on parties when confronted with the theses. The panel will give a platform to present and discuss their recent findings on the impact of Voting Advice Applications. Possible effects on voting intention, electoral choice and party behaviour will be addressed. Furthermore approaches to characterise VAA users in terms of their political media usage will be taken into account. Point of interest in a comparative and methodological perspective is the robustness of the findings. Therefore as an underlying question the panel deals with the aspect of whether there are VAA effects or if we do measure artefacts.

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