PRiSMa – Political Representation in the Age of Social Media
This five-year research project, funded by the Momentum Program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and hosted by the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences, seeks to explore the meaning of political representation in the context of social media. Our research group, comprising senior, early-career, and junior researchers in collaboration with international partners, adopts a cross-national research design to empirically and conceptually examine how political representation operates on the central platforms of today’s political communication ecosystem and assesses its implications for democratic politics.
We investigate the dynamics between institutional political actors and citizens, the responsiveness of political actors to the political activities of citizens on social media, and the role of non-electoral actors who effectively advocate for representational demands on these platforms. Additionally, we address the new forms of political inequality that emerge as social media activity can be intimidating for many individuals due to psychological or social barriers. Consequently, in analyzing patterns of political representation, we focus on the activities of both electoral and non-electoral actors and examine citizens’ experiences, practices, and sentiments within these dynamics.
The project is organized into three interconnected work packages (WPs), each distinguished by its methodological approach and conceptual focus:
- WP1 employs content analysis and data donation methods to study the interaction between political actors and citizens on social media platforms.
- WP2 investigates political representation from the perspective of citizens, emphasizing political inequalities and the influence of political actors. This work package utilizes surveys, survey-based experiments, and data donation methods to address its research questions.
- WP3 provides a conceptual and theoretical framework for understanding social media-based political representation. It offers theory-driven insights to support the empirical work packages and interprets their findings through the lens of political theory.
The outline of the project
