Using Citizen Science to Promote Transparency in British Election Campaigns

越来越多的人认为政客与选民“脱节”。根据最近对英国选民的大规模调查，四分之三的公民不相信国会议员可以信任，也不相信政治家关心公民的想法（英国选举研究，2019）。这种对政治家以及更广泛意义上的政治的日益幻灭感，被视为导致民粹主义和反民主态度抬头的原因。拟议中的项目将通过提高英国竞选活动的透明度来解决这一问题。它将开发一个易于使用的工具，供选民分析政治精英传播的竞选信息的多样性。通过这样做，该工具增强了选民对政党在竞选活动中谈论的内容的了解，以及选民做出最能代表他们利益的选择的能力。此外，新工具将使记者和学者等其他利益相关者能够更好地了解英国各地的竞选信息是如何变化的。选举传单仍然是英国竞选活动的支柱。在2017年大选之前，几乎所有与政党联系过的选民都报告说，他们至少收到过一份选举传单。事实上，英国政党和候选人花在传单上的钱比其他任何竞选活动都要多。2017年，各政党在传单的设计和邮资上花费了1300多万英镑，占各政党在竞选活动中花费的近一半。然而，虽然法律要求候选人和政党报告他们在选举传单上花了多少钱，但他们没有被要求提供有关其通讯内容的信息。此外，政党的竞选宣传越来越多地针对特定选区（即边缘席位）和这些选区内的特定选民。摇摆选民)。其结果是，选民越来越难以全面了解所有政党和候选人在竞选期间对当地选民说了什么和承诺了什么。同样，政治学家和选民也很难分析这些沟通的内容，以及这些内容在全国各地的差异。我们提出的项目将试行一种公民科学方法，以提高英国选举的透明度。我们的目标是利用众包和公民科学与主要合作伙伴民主俱乐部合作，开发一个网站，重点是提高选民对政党和候选人分发的竞选材料的认识-分析传单。co.uk。新网站将增加新的功能和公民科学导向的选举传单分析。它将允许用户a)根据各种主题对传单进行编码，b)将英国各地选举传单中的模式可视化。举例来说，使用者可根据以下资料分析单张：i)派发单张的特定政党及/或候选人；ii)派发单张的选区；以及iii)他们感兴趣的特定议题。这一工具提高了公民做出知情选举选择的能力。它试点了一种新的公民科学方法来编码选举通信，并提高了英国竞选活动的整体透明度。

Politicians are increasingly perceived as being 'out of touch' with voters. According to the most recent large-scale survey of the British electorate, three out of four citizens do not believe that MPs can be trusted or that politicians care what citizens think (British Election Study, 2019). This growing sense of disillusionment with politicians, and politics more broadly, is seen to contribute to the rise of populism and anti-democratic attitudes. The proposed project will address this situation by increasing the transparency surrounding British election campaigns. It will develop an easy-to-use tool for voters to analyse the diversity of campaign messages disseminated by political elites. In doing so, the tool enhances voters' knowledge of what parties talk about in their election campaigns and voters' ability to make choices that best represent their interests. In addition, the new tool will enable other stakeholders like journalists and academics to better understand how campaign messages vary across Britain.Election leaflets are still the backbone of British electoral campaigns. Almost all voters who were contacted by a party in the run up to the 2017 general elections reported that they received at least one election leaflet. In fact, British parties and candidates spend more money on leaflets than any other campaign activity. More than £13m was spent by parties on the design and postage of leaflets in 2017, making up nearly half of all the money spent by parties on their election campaigns. However, while candidates and parties are legally required to report how much they spend on election leaflets, they are not required to provide information about the content of their communications. Furthermore, campaign communication from political parties is increasingly targeted to specific constituencies (i.e. marginal seats) and to specific voters within those constituencies (i.e. 'swing' voters). The result of this is that it is increasingly difficult for voters to obtain complete information about what all parties and candidates are saying and promising to voters locally during election campaigns. In a similar vein, it is difficult for political scientists and voters to analyse the content of these communications and how it varies across the country. Our proposed project will pilot a citizen science approach to increasing the transparency of elections in Britain.Our aim is to utilise crowd-sourcing and citizen science in collaboration with the key partner Democracy Club to develop a website which focuses on improving voters' awareness of the campaign materials that parties and candidates distribute - AnalysingLeaflets.co.uk. The new website will add new functionality and citizen science-driven analysis to election leaflets. It will allow users to a) code leaflets according to a variety of themes, and b) visualise the patterns that occur in election leaflets across Britain. For example, users will be able to analyse leaflets according to i) the particular party and/or candidate who delivered the leaflet, ii) the constituency (or constituencies) in which leaflets were delivered, and iii) the particular issue area (or areas) that they are interested in. This tool enhances citizens' ability to make informed electoral choices. It pilots a new citizen science approach to coding election communications, and increases the overall transparency of election campaigns in Britain.