Projects

1 - 10 of 159 results

Search term:

Vox Pops or Polls? Effects of Vox Pops and Opinion Polls on Perceived Public Opinion, Personal Opinion and News Item Evaluation. University of Antwerp

Kathleen Beckers
Media, policy and culture
How news media frame and portray public opinion contributes to what audiences perceive to be the majority opinion. Journalists have several means at their disposal to present public opinion in the news. Opinions polls and vox pops—interviews with the ordinary man or woman on the street—are possibly the most common and recognized representations of the public in the news. Surprisingly, little is known about how these public opinion displays ...

How Are Policymakers Influenced by What the Public Wants? An Experimental Study of the Effect of Public Opinion on Elite Preferences and Behavior. University of Antwerp

Stefaan Walgrave
Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)
For a democracy to function well—it is often argued—representatives must listen to the people who elected them. More specifically, policy should represent citizens' preferences. A core task of political scientists is to examine whether this democratic assumption is met in reality. This project aims to contribute to the large body of scientific work on policy representation in three particular ways. First, it scrutinizes the causal effect of ...

The Voice of the People. Displays of Public Opinion in the News and Their Influence on Audiences. University of Antwerp

Stefaan Walgrave
Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)
One of the main functions of news media in democracies is representing public opinion. There are several ways in which journalists can do so: by covering (1) polls (2) vox pops (3) inferences about public opinion (4) protest or (5) social media references. Many studies focus on one of these public opinion displays. However, surprisingly, no research exists studying how these different displays are combined in the news. Gaining an understanding ...

Equality, equity or need? Public opinion towards distributive justice in the changing welfare state KU Leuven

Bart Meuleman
Centre for Sociological Research

Contemporary Western societies are characterized by a de-structuring of the social contract of

organized modernity. This brings along renewed discussions on distributive justice, i.e. how the

burdens and benefits of our welfare system can be distributed fairly. Three principles of

distributive justice are distinguished: (1) equity: distribution dependent on contributions; (2)

equality: the same access to social welfare ...

Studying Public Opinion on Democratic Innovations KU Leuven

Sofie Marien
Centre for Political Research
In recent years, concerns have been raised about a democratic legitimacy deficit in advanced democracies. Empirical studies have shown that contemporary citizens express a rather low level of trust in the key political institutions and actors and are increasingly turning towards political parties that challenge the current representative institutions or abstain from elections altogether. All across Europe, governments have tried to address ...

Deservingness perceptions in European welfare states: Comparative analyses of public opinion on the social rights and duties of needy groups. KU Leuven

Bart Meuleman
Centre for Sociological Research

In welfare states different groups of needy people are treated differently. For some groups social protection is more easily accessible, more generous, longer lasting, and/or less subjected to reciprocal obligations than for other groups. Generally, such differential treatment is assumed to be influenced by economic (e.g. less protection for less productive groups), political (e.g. better protection for groups with stronger lobbies) and ...

(WHY) DO POLITICIANS CARE ABOUT PUBLIC OPINION? Politicians' accountability beliefs: the missing link in explaining policy (in)congruence. University of Antwerp

Stefaan Walgrave
Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)
Politicians nowadays face the criticism of not being responsive towards citizens' demands, with as a classical though crucial example the recent populist uprisings. Citizens seem to believe that, even if they convey their preferences loud and clear, they are ignored by those who should represent them. One crucial guarantee of responsive politicians, lies in the threat of electoral reprisal: politicians are incentivized to do what citizens want ...