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

这个项目考察了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，它既包括政治新闻信息的供给，也包括政治信息的需求。供给是指通过传统和新媒体来源提供的新闻和公共事务内容的数量和质量，需求捕捉到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导致越来越多的不知情、误导和选择性地获得信息的公民，潜在地危及民主的运作。为了审查这些关切，该研究旨在调查以下问题：(1)今天的公民如何获得政治信息，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是什么；(3)在整个欧洲社会和欧洲社会内部，知晓和不知晓之间的区别是什么；以及(4)如何赋予公民导航和查找有价值的信息的权力。我们将通过一系列设计新颖的比较研究来做到这一点，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。这些国家在与这项研究相关的一些关键背景因素上存在差异，涵盖具有不同民主传统、媒体系统和新闻消费习惯的“年轻”民主国家和成熟民主国家。

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.