The Digital Citizen Lab

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs): Do they work? While these increasingly popular online quizzes are thought to increase voter turnout, there’s reason to be skeptical. Instead, evidence indicates that the actual virtue of VAAs lies in increasing knowledge about parties’ positions on issues—exactly the kind of information these tools were designed to provide. Check out our experiment on VAA effects for more:
https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfaa037

How can digital tools best aid public health efforts? Experts
from various fields explore strategies for effectively leveraging technology to fight the pandemic and improve outcomes for society. First step: Build public trust.
https://doi.org/10.26164/leopoldina_03_00406

🚨 DATABASE ALERT 🚨 Ever needed data on elected representatives, and didn’t know where to turn? The Comparative Legislators Database (CLD) might be for you! Published last year, the CLD joins micro-data collection efforts with renowned political science datasets to provide data on over 45,0000 contemporary and historical politicians from ten countries, covering political, sociodemographic, and online activity variables. Check it out! https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123420000897

What are the consequences of an increasingly polarized online media landscape? Together with colleagues from the United States, we use a combination of experimentation and computational techniques to uncover how exposure to partisan news impacts individuals’ news consumption, political opinions, and trust in mainstream media outlets.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2013464118

What are the consequences of an increasingly polarized online media landscape? Together with colleagues from the United States, we use a combination of experimentation and computational techniques to uncover how exposure to partisan news impacts individuals’ news consumption, political opinions, and trust in mainstream media outlets.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2013464118