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Combining earlier spatial typologies of places and communities with computer-mediated communication technologies, Hardegger developed the idea of the 4th space. Given that misinformation has become a crucial problem in many online environments over the course of the last few years, this article attempts to assess the implications of this development for the 4th space. This article begins with an analysis of people’s tendency to lie in different environments. Afterwards, properties of the 4th space are assessed that create opportunities for misinformation-based communities to emerge. Finally, open questions in relation to misinformation and the 4th space that deserve further attention are addressed.
At least since the 2016 presidential elections in the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, misinformation has gained increasing prominence in the public discourse. Only four years later, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and was accompanied by an “Infodemic”, misleading individuals about the origin of the virus, its severity, and the intentions of governments coping with the virus. Misinformation was itself deemed a considerable threat to public health. Although COVID-19 misinformation was widely circulating at that time, and continues to do so, a substantial share of individuals did not believe this misleading information. That begs the question, why do people fall for misinformation?
This question is at the heart of this dissertation project, which explores the role of social media, trust, and values in individuals’ susceptibility to false information. Through comparative research, the project investigates how these variables affect the reception of misinformation and attempts to combine multiple levels of analysis and consider different forms of misinformation.
The core of this dissertation consists of three chapters, each of which addresses the research question from a different but complementary perspective. Chapter 2 provides the conceptual basis for the subsequent empirical chapters. The chapter investigates how individual, group, and system-level variables contribute to social media’s role as a vector for misinformation. In the third chapter, I employ an experimental research design to assess whether superficial characteristics of different social media platforms affect users’ credibility judgements regarding manufactured news. Contrary to existing literature, the experiment’s results suggest that social media platforms do not differ in their effects on perceived credibility of news. The fourth chapter builds on data from a multinational research project that explored the role of values during the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on individuals’ propensity to believe in COVID-19-related conspiracy theories. Through a comparative design, using samples from Germany and Poland, the chapter finds considerable differences in the pattern of influential values and trust concepts on the adoption of conspiracy beliefs.
Although the findings of this dissertation project come with limitations, the research nevertheless highlights the importance of comparative research designs in the study of misinformation. The dissertation concludes by discussing avenues for further research.
This rejoinder responds to the eight comments to our report on ‘Enhancing Europe’s Global Power: A Scenario Exercise with Eight Proposals’. We address questions related to our definition of Europe, the notion of power, context and appropriateness of the scenario approach, the feasibility of enhancing European power, the rationale behind the proposed eight measures as well as the way ahead. Finally, we highlight green policies together with media and communication as promising candidates to increase European power.
In the present context of intensifying competition between the major trading economies and potentially game‐changing technological developments, the European Union is generally seen as the weaker party. Lacking the ‘hard power’ derived from military capabilities, it has laid claim to a ‘soft power’ of normative influence externally, yet even that is only partially utilised. Nor has Europe been able to exercise the power to coerce – ‘sharp power’ – commensurate with its economic weight as a trading bloc equivalent in size and reach to the US or China, its most prominent global competitors. How can Europe strengthen its position, and in what fields? Through a scenario exercise, we develop eight policy proposals aimed at countering Europe´s vulnerabilities and enabling it to assert its sharp and soft power more effectively. Specifically, we consider the feasibility, means and scope for their realisation. Together, they provide a transformative agenda for the EU’s position in the world.
This article investigates the role of privacy and transparency in the 4th Space and outlines their implications for the development and dissemination of conspiracy theories. We argue that privacy can be exploited by individuals and organizations to spread conspiracy theories online, while organizational transparency, intended to increase accountability and ultimately trust, can have the adverse effect and nurture conspiracy beliefs. Through the lens of the 4th Space concept, we offer suggestions on how to approach those challenges which emerge as a result of the complex entanglements of both actual and virtual world across time.
Despite a long history of legal challenges alleging that elections conducted at-large suppress minority representation, this remains the dominant electoral system in local governments throughout the United States. Moreover, a large empirical literature remains divided over the present-day impact of at-large elections on the political success of underrepresented groups. We reconcile the competing findings in this literature by providing contingent, causal estimates of the effect of conversion from at-large to ward elections on minority officeholding, using a novel identification strategy afforded by the California Voting Rights Act of 2001. We find a dramatic positive effect of conversion in districts where Latinos constitute a sufficiently large share of the voting population, and in large and residentially segregated districts. When these conditions are not satisfied, we consistently see null estimated effects.
The notion of a broad green backlash is set to dominate this year's European election campaign. Based on new survey data from more than 15.000 respondents in Germany, France and Poland, we show that it is largely overblown. A majority of voters still wish for a more ambitious climate policy and would support a raft of concrete measures to bring down emissions. However, supporting pivotal voters in the middle will require a stronger focus on green investment and industrial policy and offsetting measures for effective but unpopular policies like carbon pricing. Parties should not waste the coming months outbidding each other over how to cater to imagined climate fatigue but compete over concrete recipes to green the economy.
Political scientists frequently interpret the results of conjoint experiments as reflective of majority preferences. In this article, we show that the target estimand of conjoint experiments, the average marginal component effect (AMCE), is not well defined in these terms. Even with individually rational experimental subjects, the AMCE can indicate the opposite of the true preference of the majority. To show this, we characterize the preference aggregation rule implied by the AMCE and demonstrate its several undesirable properties. With this result, we provide a method for placing bounds on the proportion of experimental subjects who prefer a given candidate feature. We describe conditions under which the AMCE corresponds in sign with the majority preference. Finally, we offer a structural interpretation of the AMCE and highlight that the problem we describe persists even when a model of voting is imposed.
The European Parliament as an Accountability Forum: Overseeing the Economic and Monetary Union
(2022)
This book provides the first in-depth empirical study of the European Parliament’s powers of scrutiny of the executive in the European Union (EU), focusing on the politically salient field of the Economic and Monetary Union. The expansion of executive decision-making during the euro crisis was accompanied by an empowerment of the European Parliament through legislative oversight. This book examines how the European Parliament exercises that oversight on a day-to-day basis and thus contributes to political accountability at the EU level. Building on an innovative analytical framework for the study of parliamentary questions and answers, Adina Akbik sheds light on the European Parliament’s possibilities and limitations to hold EU executive bodies accountable more generally. Case studies cover the period 2012–2019 and include the European Central Bank in banking supervision, the European Commission, the Eurogroup, and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council.
As the most powerful executive actor in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the Eurogroup has faced continuous demands to improve its accountability record since the euro crisis. One reform introduced to meet these demands were the Economic Dialogue – a regular exchange of views between the European Parliament and the President of the Eurogroup designed to ‘ensure greater transparency and accountability’ in the EMU. This chapter investigates the practical functioning of the Economic Dialogues with the Eurogroup between 2013 and the 2019 European Parliament elections. Applying the theoretical framework of the introduction, the purpose is to examine the extent to which the Parliament focuses on procedural or substantive accountability when questioning the Eurogroup President. Moreover, the chapter investigates the reasoning of parliamentary questions in line with the four accountability goods identified at the outset (openness, non-arbitrariness, effectiveness, and publicness). The findings show that Members of the European Parliament are eager to question the extent to which Eurogroup decisions are substantively open and effective, and to a lesser extent whether they are arbitrary or protect EU interests more generally. The analysis is based on fourteen transcripts of Economic Dialogues with the Eurogroup President, which took place between 2013 and 2019.