This page lists a selection of past and ongoing third-party funded research or infrastructure projects. More information about my involvement, the partners and the actual research can be found through the links provided
2022-current
MEDem Monitoring Electoral Democracy
Monitoring Electoral Democracy (MEDem) aspires to become the dedicated European Research Infrastructure for Democracy Research that will serve as a catalyst for comprehensive, impactful, and innovative comparative research on democracies. MEDem will leverage the power of interconnected and harmonized data, unlocking vast amounts of research data in the Social Sciences and Humanities, and ensuring their interoperability. By harnessing this networked approach, MEDem will enable groundbreaking discoveries in Democracy Research that surpass the limitations of individual research groups or projects. Operating within an open science and open data framework, MEDem unites and guides quantitative democracy research networks and researchers across countries, institutions, and disciplines, offering a framework for pre- and post-harmonization on a wide range of democracy research data that will lay the groundwork for large scale interoperability. It will provide a one-point entry that enables seamless integration, linking, and comprehensive analysis of all types of democracy research data, dealing with the intricacies of micro-level mechanisms to the broader meso- and macro-level determinants that shape democratic systems throughout Europe, while also securing resource efficiency.
2025-2027
WHAT-IF:Advanced Simulations for Testing the Effect of the Information Environment on the Functioning of Democracy
Our political information environment is rapidly evolving: the rise of disinformation and hate speech poses significant challenges to our democracies. WHAT-IF develops a digital twin of the digital political information environment to test the effects of interventions for policy making.Studying such interventions requires access to proprietary data and cooperation from platforms, but societies cannot serve as experimental playgrounds. This makes simulations an essential tool for exploring solutions ethically and effectively.Using methodologies such as Agent-Based Modeling and Large Language Models, the project tests the impact of policy and regulatory interventions on democratic citizenship. By collaborating with policymakers, citizens, and stakeholders, WHAT-IF delivers evidence-based insights to improve media regulation, enhance democratic discourse, and advance Computational Social Science methods.
2024-2029
IRISCC - Integrated Research Infrastructure Services for Climate Change Risks
Integrated Research Infrastructure Services for Climate Change Risks (IRISCC) is a consortium of diverse and complementary leading research infrastructures (RIs) covering disciplines from natural sciences to social sciences, across different domains and sectors. IRISCC provides scientific and knowledge services to foster cutting-edge research and evidence-based policymaking to improve Europe's resilience to climate change. IRISCC ensures a “one-stop-shop” for various user communities on climate change risk related RI services by setting up a dedicated Catalogue of services and related access management system both for granting transnational (onsite and remote) and offering virtual access.
2023-2025
AUTHLIB Neo-Authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response
The Horizon project AUTHLIB investigates the sources and implications of the normative divergence from the model of liberal democracy in Europe. It is based on the premise that liberal democracy faces not one ideological challenge but many. Against that background, it carefully and systematically explores the varieties of illiberalism and their appeal, in their contemporary forms and historical appearances, in opposition and in power, in the domestic political arena and at the level of international networks. Illiberalism has diverse ways of appealing to elites, citizens, and specific social groups. These include narratives, programs and policies, emotional triggers, institutional innovations, and sophisticated methods of diffusion, each of which needs to be understood and mapped.
2024-2026
CIDAPE - Climate, Inequality, and Democratic Action: The Force of Political Emotions
In a world filled with division, the CIDAPE project seeks ways to establish a more engaged citizenry. Awarded by Horizon Europe, CIDAPE (Climate, Inequality and Democratic Action: The Force of Political Emotions) redefines citizen engagement as more than just a tool; it's a dynamic process that strengthens democracy. This international project brings together 11 partners from nine European countries, all dedicated to exploring the impact of our emotions on democratic politics.
2023-2026
Listening to Literature
Auditory reception has always been an important form of literary consumption, but in the 21st century, listening to literature, particularly in the form of audiobooks, has once again become a widespread activity. However, despite their popularity, audiobooks are often credited with being a shallow and less demanding alternative to reading and cannot replace reading the printed book. Since there is still very little empirical research on listening to literature, it seems important to thoroughly examine the specific practices and experiences of listening to literary audiobooks and to compare them with traditional print reading.
2020-2023
OPTED Observatory for Political Texts in European Democracies
OPTED is a design study that lays the foundation for an infrastructure that will serve a major hub for political text analysis in Europe. The EU-funded H2020 project involves 17 research institutions organized in 10 work packages which collaboratively work on designing the building blocks of the infrastructure. Among the objectives of the infrastructure are scientific community building, the extension of text analysis tools, and learning materials for social scientists, the broader public and journalists.
2020-2023
ySkills Youth Skills
Digitisation is changing society. ICTs strongly impact children's and adolescents' wellbeing. In order to benefit from these, new skill sets are required. Youth Skills (acronym: ySKILLS) aims to enhance and maximise long-term positive impact of the digital environment
2018-2024
KR Knowledge Resistance
https://knowledge-resistance.com
The research program Knowledge Resistance (funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) aims to investigate the nature and causes of knowledge resistance. A central hypothesis of the project is that knowledge resistance is the result of a complex interaction between emotions, cognition, social interaction and the flow of information. This means that a proper investigation of the phenomenon requires a genuinely interdisciplinary approach. So far, research on the topic has been scattered across disciplines, with no attempt to provide a coherent, unified framework for all investigations. This program brings together groups of researchers from philosophy, psychology, political science and media research, and uses a wide range of empirical and analytical methods to systematically investigate knowledge resistance, its nature, causes and consequences.
2019-2022
Books on Screen
Today, more and more books are read on screens such as e-readers, tablets, or smartphones. However, little is currently known about the effects of this mediality on literary experience. This project examines the question of how the literary experience changes when literary texts are no longer consumed in the form of a printed book but via a screen. In concrete terms, this project explores the reception of literary texts of varying complexity, drawing on a series of experiments.
2021–2024
Digitize!Computational Social Sciences in the digital and social Transformation
https://digitize-transformation.at
Digitize! is a cooperative digitalisation project of university partners across Austria including a variety of scientific disciplines. The project adresses the multi-faceted phenomenon of digitalisation and its various forms as well as the societal transformations coming along with with. Social and technological changes - such as increased datafication of individual and societal spheres of life - pose new challenges and tasks also for the (social) sciences. Social sciences must keep pace with technological, social and digital transformations and take an active part. Digitize! will contribute to this active role and advancement of the social sciences within a changing society.
2021-2024
ACPP Austrian Corona Panel Project
https://viecer.univie.ac.at/en/projects-and-cooperations/austrian-corona-panel-project/
The project investigates how information, attitudes, and behaviours are distributed across the population, and how these develop in the course of the crisis. Under the leadership of Bernhard Kittel (Department of Economic Sociology), Sylvia Kritzinger (Department of Government), Hajo Boomgaarden (Department of Communication) and Barbara Prainsack (Department of Political Science), an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Vienna, together with collaborators from other institutions, is addressing questions such as: How do people perceive the new health and economic threats? How do Austrians feel about the political measures taken during the crisis? How do they view the democratic challenges and the role of the media? The study is based on a panel survey with a sample of 1500 respondents, which represents the sociodemographic structure of the Austrian population. Panel survey means that the same people are interviewed repeatedly in order to be able to monitor changes in a time of rapid upheaval. Between the end of March 2020 and the beginning of July 2020 the survey was conducted in a weekly rhythm, from then on the interval was successively increased and since August 2020 the data are collected monthly. The questionnaire contains a set of core questions that is asked in each survey wave as well as changing modules that go deeper into certain dimensions and are surveyed at larger intervals. This makes it possible to monitor important trends and to focus on key issues and aspects such as family, work, politics or media.
2022-2024
OMEDIALITERACY Overview of the challenges and opportunities of media literacy policies in Europe
https://omedialiteracy.univie.ac.at
One of the greatest current societal challenges is the online proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, and ‘fake news’. Exposure to false or misleading information increases the likelihood that individuals will believe potentiaally harmful information. As such OMEDIALITERACY brings together four leading European universities to identify existing knowledge about the effects of disinformation in Europe, to compare media literacy policies in Austria, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, and to propose best practices to counter disinformation.
2000-2023
MIRROR Migration-Related Risks Caused by Misconceptions of Opportunities and Requirement
https://h2020mirror.eu
MIRROR is a research project that aims to generate a greater understanding of how people (from outside the European Union) perceive Europe as a destination for migration. The results of the project will form the basis for policy recommendations and the development of the MIRROR platform and toolset for effective cross-media perception analysis. The MIRROR project is broken down into work packages to structure work to be done during the runtime and to enable multiple teams to simultaneously work on different components in the project.
2018-2021
REMINDER Role of European mobility and its impacts in narratives, debates and EU reforms
https://www.reminder-project.eu
REMINDER brings a multidisciplinary approach to understanding free movement in Europe. A consortium of 14 organisations, the project combines expertise from different fields including: development, economics, linguistics, media studies, political science and public policy. The research methods used in the 12 work packages reflect this broad spectrum of backgrounds and include content analysis based on manual and computer-assisted techniques (traditional media, social media, political party and civil society communications), econometric analysis (cross-sectional and longitudinal data), multi-wave panel survey experiments of public opinion, and qualitative analysis of practitioner experiences, social impacts and mobility decisions, among others.
2011-2014
Mediated Populism.