Using Citizen Science to Promote Transparency in British Election Campaigns

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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.