ERC EXPO project entailed the collection of original data using cutting-edge methodologies and tools, all of which were made open source. We fielded 3 panel surveys, one every 3 months, in 3 countries among over 7,000 individuals. These over time survey data on participants’ attitudes, perceptions, cognitions, and behaviors were combined with their online web browsing data and with automated content-level classifications. This entailed developing questionnaires, translations, training coders toward developing open-source automated classifications, compiling country-specific lists of news media sources, managing large databases, among other tasks. In addition, we fielded online experiments using quality samples and innovative methodological approaches to examine the factors that minimize polarization and increase people’s openness to cross-cutting views, the effects of exposure to partisan media from the other side, the effects of increased or decreased consumption of news media, among others. Furthermore, we also tested innovative solutions to incentivizing exposure to quality, diverse, and verified news. In particular, we fielded an over-time field experiment on Twitter, relying on NLP-trained chat bots that interacted with 28,000 Twitter users to encourage them to follow news accounts. We also fielded a month-long experiment on regular YouTube users who installed a browser extension that nudged the algorithm versus the users toward incentivizing greater recommendations and exposure to quality news. We also developed an interactive mock platform, where pop-up messages encouraged people to follow political and news accounts. This work was widely exploited and disseminated. Scientifically, we have over 15 well-cited publications and 10+ papers under review, in the revise and resubmit process, or finalized for submission. These activities have led to important technological achievements and have advanced state of the art when it comes to online experimentation, computational approaches for data collection and analysis, publicly available categorizations of the ideological leaning of news sources and of automated classifications for online content. These activities also contributed to open and replicable social science (pre-registrations, making all tools, data, and code public offering trainings on open science). Lastly, ERC EXPO team has given presentations at conferences, workshops, and as invited keynotes internationally.
