Can democracy be promoted via social media advertisement to reach millions of people?

In this session, Professor Neundorf will present insights from her experimental research on the effectiveness of short, animated online videos to promote the virtues of democracy in shaping democratic attitudes and behaviors. Conducted across 33 countries – including both democracies and dictatorships from around the world – the study shows that these campaigns on social media yielded consistently positive results in varied political and economic environments. The results demonstrate that these online videos positively impact – even after two weeks – key outcomes, such as bolstering preference for democracy, reducing approval for non-democratic forms of governance, increasing the inclination to vote for democratic candidates, increasing knowledge about key components of liberal democracy, enhancing respondents’ political engagement, and decreasing the negative impacts of partisan polarisation. For more information on the project, see here.

Speaker:

Anja Neundorf, Professor of Politics and Research Methods at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. She is currently leading a European Research Council Consolidator Grant project on “Democracy under Threat: How Education can Save it” (DEMED).