Project Details
Projekt
Political Online-Microtargeting During the European Elections 2024: Attitudes, Knowledge, Participation, Privacy
Subject Area
Communication Sciences
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 519731504
Political online microtargeting has been used by political parties in recent election campaigns and became the focus of global debates about the manipulation of voters after the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016. Online political microtargeting is also viewed critically in Germany: Almost 90% of people in Germany demand that political advertising should be marked more clearly and wish for better regulation of political online ads. The intrusion into individual privacy is viewed particularly problematic by users. The overarching goal of this research project is to investigate the relation between political online microtargeting, political attitudes, knowledge, participation and privacy using the example of German parties’ Facebook advertising during the European elections in 2024. The project will focus on the perception and effects of online political microtargeting. Empirically, we will explore explicit use cases by means of a qualitative pre-study to derive concrete hypotheses. How users perceive Facebook ads of German parties and how they influence their privacy concerns and voting behavior, will be investigated in a four-week tracking and panel study during the European election campaign. Furthermore, we will conduct three experimental studies to investigate how the congruency between online microtargeting messages and specific voter targets affects the perceptions of privacy, attitudes, knowledge, and participation. With this project we aim at contributing to the general understanding of political online microtargeting in Germany and Europe. Furthermore, the results will inform the debate around whether and how microtargeting can be used by political parties in a way that considers and protects peoples’ privacy needs and their need for information.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
