Project description
How political disinformation claims affect on democracy
In today’s era of misinformation, politicians are frequently accused of distorting the truth for their own benefit. These accusations can undermine citizens’ trust in representative democracy. However, our understanding of when these accusations take hold, how citizens perceive them, and their impact on democratic engagement is limited. The ERC-funded DEMO-LIES project aims to investigate accusations of political lying and their effects on democratic citizenship. The project will analyse historical trends, identify conditions under which accusations arise, study citizens’ perceptions, and examine the consequences for democratic engagement. Covering 20 European countries, the project will use various research methods to provide insights into political deception and its effects on democratic citizenship.
Objective
In today’s age of ‘misinformation’, politicians are frequently accused of bending the truth to their advantage. As citizens rely on accurate and accessible information to meaningfully engage with politics, political lying violates the contract between citizens and their elected representatives. Political lying accusations therefore have the potential to erode citizens’ trust in and commitment to representative democracy as a system of governance.
While political lying accusations may be as old as politics itself, we know little about when accusations of political lying take root, how accusations of political deception are perceived by citizens, and what their effects are on citizens’ democratic citizenship.
To shed light on the issue of political lying accusations and its implications for democratic citizenship this project: (1) describes the historical trends in political lying accusations; (2) identifies the conditions under which politicians accused one another of deception, and characterizes the attributes of both the accused and accusers of political lying; (3) studies citizens’ perceptions of accusations of political deception by exploring the individual and contextual factors that influence these perceptions; (4) investigates the consequences for democratic citizenship by examining how exposure to lying accusations affects citizens’ trust in democracy, their support for liberal democracy as a system of governance, as well as their active engagement with politics. The empirical analyses focus on 20 European countries and rely on an integrated multi-method approach including automated text analysis, qualitative interviews, observational and experimental surveys, and longitudinal survey evidence.
By addressing these critical knowledge gaps, this project will provide invaluable insights into the dynamics of political deception and its consequences for democratic citizenship.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
6525 XZ Nijmegen
Netherlands