THREATPIE: The Threats and Potentials of a Changing Political Information Environment

本项目考察欧洲民主国家当前政治信息环境的变化如何影响健康民主的条件。作为理论背景，我们采用了“政治信息环境”（PIE）的概念，它包括政治新闻和信息的供给和需求。供给是指通过传统媒体和新媒体提供的新闻和公共事务内容的数量和质量，需求是指公众想要或消费的新闻和信息的数量和类型。最近政治信息环境的变化可能会导致越来越多的穿制服的、被误导的和有选择地接受信息的公民，这可能会危及民主的运作。为了研究这些问题，本研究旨在调查以下问题：(1)今天的公民如何获得政治信息，以及这与他们的政治态度和行为有何关系；(2)公民接触到的信息的内容和质量如何；(3)在欧洲社会之间和内部，被告知和不被告知之间存在哪些差异；(4)公民如何被授权浏览和发现有价值的信息。我们将通过一系列比较的、创新设计的研究来做到这一点，包括网络跟踪、比较调查、焦点小组和在14个欧洲国家和美国进行的调查嵌入实验。这些国家在与研究相关的一些关键背景因素上有所不同，涵盖了“年轻”和成熟的民主国家，具有不同的民主传统、媒体制度和新闻消费习惯。

This project examines how the current changes in the political information environments inEuropean democracies affect the conditions for a healthy democracy. As a theoreticalbackground we employ the concept of ‘political information environment’ (PIE) that includes boththe supply and demand of political news and information. Supply refers to the quantity andquality of news and public affairs content provided through traditional and new media sources,demand captures the amount and type of news and information the public wants or consumes.Recent changes in the political information environment may lead to a growing number ofuniformed, misinformed and selectively informed citizens, potentially endangering thefunctioning of democracy. To examine these concerns, the study aims at investigating thefollowing: (1) how do citizens today gain political information and how does this relate to theirpolitical attitudes and behaviour; (2) what is the content and quality of the information citizensare 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 empowered to navigate andfind valuable information. We will do this through a series of comparative, innovatively designedstudies, including web tracking, comparative surveys, focus groups and survey-embeddedexperiments in 14 European countries and the US. These countries vary on a number of keycontextual factors relevant for the study, covering both “young” and established democracieswith different democratic traditions, media systems, and news consumption habits.