Project DEMED

The DEMED team published a new paper entitled "A Loyal Base: Support for Authoritarian Regimes in Times of Crisis" in Comparative Political Studies. Click here to read the article.

he DEMED team organized a workshop in Istanbul on 27 September 2024, bringing together representatives from around 30 local civil society organizations, international organizations, and academics to exchange ideas, experiences, and new strategies for conducting civic education online. More information can be accessed here.

DEMED has launched a policy brief, where we summarise our research and include a series of policy recommendations based on our findings. Download the DEMED Policy Brief

The DEMED team just published a new working paper on “Promoting Democracy Through Social Media Advertisements? A Field Experiment in Mobilizing Election Monitors”, where we conducted an experiment in collaboration with a Turkish NGO to mobilize election monitors through paid social media ads.

Professor Neundorf gave the keynote lecture on "Democracy under Threat: How Education can Save it”, presenting research from my ERC project DEMED, at the Swiss Summer School in Democracy Studies in Zurich on 9 September.

The DEMED team is presenting three papers related to the project at the 2024 APSA Annual Meeting.

On Thu, 5 September at 10:00h we are presenting "Strategies of Political Control and Regime Survival in Autocracies" in the panel "Perspectives of Authoritarian Durability and Survival"

On Thu, 5 September at 12:00h we are presenting "Indoctrination and Personalism in Dictatorships" in the panel "Autocratic and Tranditional Leaders"

On Sat, 7 September at 12:00h we are presenting "Supporting Democracy through Social Media Ads? An Online Field Experiment" in the panel "Media Campaigns and Persuasion"

The DEMED team and co-authors published a new article on conceptualizing and measuring support for democracy in Comparative Political Studies. Click here to read the article. 

The DEMED team is presenting three papers related to the project at the 2024 EPSA Annual Meeting.

On Thu, 4 July at 9:00h we are presenting "Supporting Democracy Through Social Media Advertisements? AN Online Field Experiment in Turkey" in the panel "The Cement of Society"

On Thu, 4 July at 15:00h we are presenting "How Data Collection Methods Affect Inferences: Lessons from Three Education Data Sets" in the panel "Measurement and Data Collection 1"

On Fri, 5 July at 11:00h we are presenting "How Do Autocracies Survive? Comparing Repression, Co-optation, and Indoctrination Strategies in the panel "Autocratic Rules"

The DEMED team presented their paper titled "Rallying 'round the School House: The Politicization of Education in Times of War" at the pre-EPSA 2024 APSG workshop.

Professor Anja Neundorf is presenting their pioneering research on online civic education to the NECE magazine. The interview link can be found here.

The interview summarises the key findings of their research and provides insights into the innovative methods of online surveys and the challenges of conducting such research.

The DEMED team presented their paper titled "A Comparative Study of the Autocrat's Toolkit for Political Control: Repression, Co-optation, and Indoctrination" at the New Faces and Methods in Authoritarian Politics Workshop hosted by APSG at Tulane University. Click here to view the program.

The article that introduces the Varieties of Indoctrination (V-Indoc) dataset has been published in Perspectives on Politics. Click here to read the article.

Professor Neundorf presented DEMED research on online civic education and the long-term effects of school education on democratic support at three universities in Edinburgh, Aarhus, and Copenhagen.

Professor Neundorf presented DEMED research on online civic education and the long-term effects of school education on democratic support at three universities in London (UCL), Barcelona (Autonoma Barcelona), and Hamburg. 

The DEMED team published a new short paper on indoctrination in Russia in the German-language outlet “Russland Analysen”: Click here to read the article. 

Three new working papers from the DEMED team are available to view:

• (When) Does Online Civic Education Work: Evidence from a Cross-National Experiment. Anja Neundorf, Steven Finkel, Aykut Öztürk, Ericka Rascón Ramírez. [Working paper]

• Autocratic and Democratic Imprinting: The Long-term Impact of Education on Democratic Support. Anja Neundorf, Johannes Gerschewski, Natasha Lindstaedt, Roman-Gabriel Olar, and Rosalind Shorrocks. [Working paper]

• Indoctrination and Personalism in Dictatorships. Katerina Tertytchnaya, Wooseok Kim, Anja Neundorf, Ksenia Northmore-Ball, and Eugenia Nazrullaeva. [Working paper]

• Democracy and the Politicization of Education. Agustina Paglayan, Anja Neundorf, and Wooseok Kim. [Working paper]

The full list of publications and working papers related to the DEMED project can be found HERE.

We are excited to announce that Souleymane "Piiga" Yameogo has joined the DEMED team as a postdoctoral research fellow after competing his PhD studies at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management. His profile can be seen HERE. Welcome!

The DEMED team is presenting five papers related to the project at the 2023 APSA Annual Meeting.

On Thu, 31 Aug at 12:00h we are presenting "Societal Characteristics and Citizens’ Assessments of Democratic Quality" and "Conceptualising and Measuring Support for Liberal Democracy across the World" in the panel "Democratic Support: Misperceptions and Understanding of Democracy" 

On Fri, 1 Sept at 8:00h we are presenting "How Data Collection Methods Affect Inferences: Lessons from 3 Education Datasets" in the panel "Education System Worldwide: Innovations in Education Policy Research"

On Fri, 1 Sept at 10:00h we are presenting "(When) Does Online Democracy Promotion Work: A Cross-National Experiment" in the panel "Explaining Citizen Support for Democratic Norms and Values"

On Fri, 1 Sept at 16:00h we are presenting "Democratization and Indoctrination" in the panel on "Historical Development of Education Systems: Motivations and Consequences"

The DEMED team is presenting three papers related to the project at the 2023 EPSA Annual Meeting.

On Thur, 22 June at 16:20h we are presenting "Conceptualising and measuring support for liberal democracy across the world" in the panel "Understanding citizen support for democracy"

On Fri, 23 June at 8:30h we are presenting "The trade-offs of democracy: Pitting democracy against economic and non-economic threats" in the panel "Assessing democracies & dictatorships"

On Sat, 24 June at 12:40h we are presenting "(When) Does online democracy promotion work: Evidence from a cross-national experiment" in the panel on "Democratisation"

DEMED team members are also involved in numerous other papers that will be presented at the conference:

Thur, 22 June:

• 9:00h
  • Staffan I. Lindberg: "Stretching Democratic Boundaries: Elections, Authoritarian Polarization, and Autocratization Onsets" in the panel "Democratic Backsliding and Autocracies"
• 10:50h
  • Anja Neundorf: "Regional Inequality and Anti-Democratic Preferences" in the panel "Inequality"
  • Florian Foos: "Identity Alignment in Campaigning: Field experimental evidence from Germany" in the panel "Affective polarization considers Identity"
• 12:40h
  • Katerina Tertytchnaya: "Agreeableness and Preference Falsification in Non-Democracies" in the panel "Money, Propaganda, and Power in Authoritarian Russia"
• 16:20h
  • Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen: "Social Desirability Bias as Substance and Not Nuisance" in the panel "Understanding citizen support for democracy"
  • Sirianne Dahlum: "The social foundation of democracy" in the panel "Understanding citizen support for democracy"

Fri, 23 June:

• 8:30h
  • Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen: "The Public Illusion of Autocratic Efficiency" in the panel "Assessing democracies & dictatorships"
• 15:10h
  • Staffan I. Lindberg: "Disinformation and Regime Survival" in the panel "Visitor Disinformation Centre"

Sat, 24 June:

• 9:00h
  • Adrian del Rio: "Channeling unrest? Opposition coordination in authoritarian elections. Evidence from 2021 smart voting strategy in Russia" in the panel "Parties and Elites in non-Democracies I"
• 10:50h
  • Adrian del Rio: "How elite defections can weaken authoritarian regimes" in the panel "Parties and Elites in non-Democracies II"
  • Wooseok Kim: "Party System Institutionalization across Regimes and Regime Transitions" in the panel "Regime Transitions"
• 14:30h
  • Sirianne Dahlum: "The Dark Side of Mobilisation: Global Evidence on Authoritarian Protests" in the panel "The politics of security"
  • Sirianne Dahlum: "Social norms and support for democracy: Experimental evidence from Norway" in the panel "Democratic quality and satisfaction"

DEMED is hiring a new postdoc to start this Autumn.

Profile: Advanced quant skills with a background in (experimental) public opinion research, whether in democracies or autocracies.

Deadline: 14/Jul.

Suitable candidates: very advanced PhD students (who will submit their thesis latest in Sep) or current postdocs.

The job is fixed term for 18 months with a possibility to be extended by another 9 months.

For details and how to apply, visit: Postdoctoral Research Associate in Democratic Politics at University of Glasgow (jobs.ac.uk).

We are pleased to co-sponsor a mini-conference on Authoritarian Politics organized by the Authoritarian Political Systems Group, which will be held just before EPSA in Glasgow on 21 June. In the conference, we will also present the DEMED project "Civic Education and Regime Support Under Authoritarian Regimes". For more details: https://apsg.work/mini-conference-on-authoritarian-politics/

Professor Anja Neundorf is presenting the first results of the DEMED project on "(When) Does civic education work: Evidence from a cross-national online experiment" at the Comparative Politics and Political Economy seminar at the University of Konstanz.

Professor Neundorf, Professor Finkel, Dr Rascon and Dr Ozturk of Work Package 3 are meeting in Glasgow to prepare the DEMED project on online civic education, where we are running original civic education interventions in more than 30 countries.

We just published a new working paper on "Varieties of Indoctrination (V-Indoc): Introducing a Global Dataset on the Politicization of Education and the Media", by Anja Neundorf, Eugenia Nazrullaeva, Ksenia Northmore-Bal, Katerina Tertytchnaya, and Wooseok Kim. The paper is available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4453086

We just published a new working paper on "Building Democratic Support in Authoritarian Contexts: How Message Frames Matter" by Aykut Ozturk, Anja Neundorf, Steven Finkel, and Ericka Rascon Ramirez. The paper can be accessed here: https://osf.io/fqn5g/

We just registered a new multi-country experiment, where we will test five original civic education interventions in more than 30 countries. See our registrations for three separate papers, which we plan to write using the data here: https://osf.io/pmbe3, https://osf.io/qjrdz, and https://osf.io/nb2x4

Professor Neundorf is presenting DEMED research in the Comparative Politics Speaker Series at the University of Frankfurt. The title of her talk is "Nostalgia and the Threat to Democracy: How Education can Save it"

Professor Neundorf is presenting DEMED research in the ECPR Standing Group Political Culture (online). The title of her talk is "Nostalgia and the Threat to Democracy". Info and registration: https://t.co/FrqigWkM3a

19 April 2023 - 15h (BST): Using Targeted Social Media Advertising to Sample Global Migrant Populations: (Thomas Soehl, Zhenxiang Chen, and Aaron Erlich)
26 April 2023 - 16h (BST): Using social media data to measure networks and social capital (Michael Bailey, Meta)

For more details and registration, visit https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/democracyresearch/dataandmethods/socialmediaasaresearchtool/webinarseries/

We just registered a new experiment, which we plan to run in Turkey in collaboration with the NGO Vote & Beyond. The purpose of the project is to assess the effectiveness of social media advertisement in recruiting election monitors. The registration can be accessed here: https://osf.io/gjaqd

We just published a new working paper on "Democracy and the Politicization of Education" written by Agustina Paglayan, Anja Neundorf, and Wooseok Kim: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4395806

We are presenting the following paper at ISA 2023 in Montreal: "Adult civic education and support for democratic values: A systematic review and meta-analysis". The working paper is also available here: https://osf.io/427gh/

We just registered a new multi-country conjoint experiment, where test people's societal trade-offs between democracy and other economic and non-economic factors. The experiment will be run in more than 30 countries. See our registrations for two separate papers, which we plan to write using the data here: https://osf.io/5cwmx and https://osf.io/d4zau

The V-Indoc dataset was publicly launched today, and the launch webinar was attended by 171 individuals. You can see the recording of the webinar HERE, and the slides for the presentation can be found HERE.

A new article by DEMED researchers Steven Finkel, Anja Neundorf, and Ericka Rascón Ramírez has just been published online at American Journal of Political Science. The article is entitled  "Can Online Civic Education Induce Democratic Citizenship? Experimental Evidence from a New Democracy." Click here to reach the article.

An article by DEMED researchers Anja Neundorf and Aykut Öztürk has just been published by PLOS One. The article explores how the use of various Facebook tools affects the recruitment of online research participants through advertisements. Click here to reach the article.

The Glasgow-based DEMED team ended the year with a visit to the Christmas market and a delicious dinner. We wish everyone Happy Holidays and a wonderful 2023! :) 

Cristina Chueca Del Cerro has joined the DEMED team. Visit Cristina's profile for more information.

Prof. Anja Neundorf and Dr. Aykut Ozturk organized the second session of Autumn 2022 series of DEMED webinars on the use of use of social media for research purposes. Michael Zoorob (Meta) was the guest speaker. You can reach more information on the session here.

Prof. Anja Neundorf will present the data from Work Package 1 at INPESS 2022 Conference as a keynote speaker. 

Prof. Anja Neundorf and Dr. Aykut Ozturk organized the first session of Autumn 2022 series of DEMED webinars on the use of use of social media for research purposes. Katrin Weller (GESIS&CAIS) and Indira Sen (GESIS) were guest speakers. You can reach more information on the session here.

Prof. Anja Neundorf and Dr. Ezgi Elci presented their work, entitled "Nostalgia and the threat to democracy" at European Politics Online Workshop. The presentation video is available here. 

The DEMED team co-organised a two-day workshop at the University of Oxford.

DAY 1 – 31 October 2022

9:00-9:15: Welcome and introductions

9:15-10:35: “World Education Reform Database (WERD): A New Global Dataset on Education Reforms” – Patricia Bromley, Rie Kijima, Lisa Overbey, Jared Furuta, Minju Choi and Heitor Santos

10:35-10:50: Break

10:50-12:10: “Schoolpol: Actors and Reforms” – Jane Gingrich and Anja Giudici

12:10-13:10: Lunch

13:10-1430: “Varieties of Indoctrination (V-Indoc): Introducing a global dataset on the politization of education and political communication” – Anja Neundorf, Eugenia Nazrullaeva, Ksenia Northmore-Ball and Katerina Tertytchnaya

14:30-15:50: “Historical Education Quality Database” – Agustina Paglayan

15:50-16:05: Break

16:05-17:25: “Education Policies and Systems across Modern History: A Global Dataset” – Carl Henrik Knutsen, Adrian del Rio Rodriquez and Philipp M. Lutscher

DAY 2 – 1 November 2022

9:00-10:20: “Education as a Window at Nation-Building: An Overview of the Nation-Building Policies (NBP) Dataset” – Matthias vom Hau, Emre Amasyali, Juliette Crespin-Boucaud and Chung-Ying Wu

10:20-10:35: Break

10:35-11:55: "The Global Development of Coverage and Generosity in Public Education" – Fabian Besche-Truthe, Kerstin Martens, Michael Windzio, Helen Seitzer, Dennis Niemann, Fabian Besche-Truthe, David Krogmann

12:00-13:00: Lunch

13:00-14:20: “Global dynamics of educational policy: The international spread and contextualization of school governance reforms” – Toni Verger

14:20-15:30 – Where to go next

Prof. Anja Neundorf and Dr. Aykut Ozturk have just released a new preprint, sharing results from their research on online surveys. The preprint entitled "Advertising Online Surveys on Social Media: How Your Advertisements Affect Your Samples." Click here to reach the preprint.

DEMED researchers, Anja Neundorf, Eugenia Nazrullaeva, Ksenia Northmore-Ball, and Katerina Tertytchnaya have recently published an article, named "The invasion of Ukraine has upended Russian education," on the Washington Post's the Monkey Cage blog. The article relies on expert surveys collected as part of the DEMED Project. 

Wooseok Kim has joined the DEMED team. Visit Wooseok's profile for more information.  

We just registered the pre-analysis plan of a new study part of WP3 that will be conducted in Turkey exploring the use of online civic education materials for democracy promotion. The registration is available here. 

Anja Neundorf and Sergi Pardos-Prado have just released a new preprint, sharing results from their research on authoritarian nostalgia in Spain. The preprint entitled "Authoritarian nostalgia, democratic support and radical right voting." Click here to reach the preprint.

DEMED held a team meeting to work on Work Package 3, preparing original civic education interventions and experimentally testing their impact on democratic support in Turkey.

DEMED researchers Anja Neundorf, Aykut Öztürk, Ksenia Northmore-Ball, Katerina Tertytchnaya, and Johannes Gerschewski,  have just released a new preprint, sharing results of their research on normative support for authoritarian regimes. The paper is entitled "A Loyal Base: Support for Authoritarian Regimes in Times of Crisis." Click here to reach the preprint.

DEMED is hiring a new Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Democratic Politics. The post is for two years, starting on 1 September 2022. We are  looking for someone with a substantive background in the study of  authoritarian and/or democratic regimes and/or the politics of education. A strong quantitative background is essential. This postdoc will support Work Package 1, where we are currently collecting extensive expert coded data (by V-Dem) on indoctrination, creating unique data on education and media. 

Deadline: 21 February 2022

We offer:

• Salary: £36,382 - £40,927 per year (approx. 43,586 - 49,031 Euro)
• Budget for travel and research assistance
• An internationally leading research team
• A pleasant and stimulating working environment
• Glasgow’s high-quality of living and rich opportunities for culture
  and outdoor activities

Together with with the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project at the University of Gothenburg, we now started the data collection for a new expert survey on regime indoctrination, focusing on education policies and practices as well as media propaganda for over 100 countries from around the world. Until mid February, more than 1,000 eduction and media experts will complete our questionnaire. The data will be released publicly in 2023.

For more info, see our “call for experts.” 

Anja Neundorf and Aykut Ozturk have just released a handbook, describing how to use Facebook and Instagram to recruit online survey participants. Click here to reach the handbook.

Professor Neundorf is presenting the DEMED paper "Nostalgia and the threat to democracy" (with Elçi, E.) at the Politics Department, University of Leicester. (virtual event) 

Professor Neundorf will present the paper “A loyal base? Authoritarian system support in times of crisis: The case of Turkey (Neundorf, A., Gerschewski, J., Northmore-Ball, K., Ozturk, A. and K. Tertytchnaya)” at the Carlos III-Juan March Institute in Madrid, Spain (virtual).

For more information: https://ic3jm.es/en/activities/permanent-seminar/ 

Professor Neundorf gave a Keynote lecture on “The current state and the future of women in Political Methodology” in the Women in Political Methodology Speaker Series. More details here: http://zurichsummerschool.com/speaker-series/. (virtual event) 

Two papers from DEMED Project were presented at the American Political Science Association's 2021 Annual Meeting:

• Democratic Citizenship Through Adult Civic Education? A Review and Meta-Analysis

• Indoctrination, Citizen Support, and Political Regimes

DEMED working paper, entitled "A loyal base? Authoritarian system support in times of crisis: The case of Turkey" was discussed in the Virtual Workshop of Authoritarian Regimes. The paper was prepared by Anja Neundorf, Aykut Ozturk, Ksenia Northmore-Ball, Katerina Tertytchnaya, and Johannes Gerschewski.

Discussants were Jason Brownlee (UT Austin), Sabri Ciftci (Kansas State University), Henry Hale (George Washington University), and Bryn Rosenfeld (Cornell University). 

Postdoctoral Fellow, Eugenia Nazrullaeva, is taking up a new post as a LSE Fellow. Eugenia has made incredibly important contributions to DEMED in the last year. She will however remain connected to the project as a DEMED Research Affiliate. We all wish Eugenia the very best in her new post. 

DEMED researchers Steven Finkel, Junghyun Lim, Anja Neundorf, Aykut Öztürk, and Daniel Shephard  have just released a new preprint, sharing results of systematic review on civic education interventions. Click here to reach the preprint.

Prof. Anja Neundorf and Dr. Aykut Ozturk presented their working paper exploring the use of Facebook for survey participant recruitment at the General Online Research Conference 2021. The presentation video is available on YouTube. 

Professor Neundorf, Professor Finkel, and Dr. Rascon presented the DEMED research on civic education to the USAID Civil Society and Media Team (virtual event).

Five new research assistants have joined the DEMED team to support the country expert recruitment of Work Package 1.

Check out their profiles: 

• Isabel Kempner
• Anam Kuraishi
• Anna Sarasiti
• Yilin Su

DEMED researchers Anja Neundorf and Aykut Öztürk have just released a new preprint, sharing findings of their research exploring how the use of various Facebook tools affects the recruitment of online research participants through advertisements. Click here to reach the the preprint.

Anja Neundorf, Aykut Ozturk, Ksenia Northmore-Ball, Katerina Tertytchnaya, and Johannes Gerschewski virtually presented their co-authored working paper, entitled "A loyal base? Support for authoritarian regimes in times of crisis – The case of Turkey" in European Political Science Association Conference. 

Professor Neundorf presented the DEMED paper ‘Nostalgia and the threat to democracy’ (with Elçi, E.) at the Comparative Politics Department, University of Bergen. (virtual event) 

Aykut Ozturk presented their co-authored work with Prof. Anja Neundorf, entitled "Recruiting Research Participants through Facebook Advertisements," to a group of scholars and students from LSE. Their work discusses best practices to recruit survey participants through Facebook paid advertisements. 

Anja Neundorf and Aykut Ozturk presented a paper, entitled "Recruiting Survey Participants through Facebook Advertisements" in PolMeth Europe conference. The paper included their findings regarding the use of Facebook tools for the recruitment of survey participants. The study was conducted as part of DEMED Work Package 3.

Prof. Anja Neundorf will present her paper co-authored with Steve Finkel and Ericka Rascon Ramirez at the NYU Abu Dhabi Political Science Speaker Series. The title of the paper is "Can Online Civic Education Induce Democratic Citizenship?  Experimental evidence from a New Democracy?"

DEMED researchers have received training from Dr. Franziska Meinck (University of Edinburgh) on systematic review and meta-analysis.

Steve Finkel (University of Pittsburgh), Junghyun Lim (University of Pittsburgh), Anja Neundorf (University of Glasgow), and Aykut Ozturk (University of Glasgow) will conduct a systematic review of the civic education literature, starting from January 2021. 

The entire DEMED team came together for the first time. Due to COVID restrictions, the event took place online.

Prof. Anja Neundorf presented a working paper, titled "Can Online Civic Education Induce Democratic Citizenship Experimental Evidence from a New Democracy," at LSE Political Behavior Seminar. This paper is co-authored with Steven Finkel and Ericka Rascon Ramirez, and it explores how online civic education can induce democratic citizenship relying on online survey experiments conducted in Tunisia. 

Eugenia Nazrullaeva and Aykut Öztürk has joined the DEMED team. Visit Eugenia's and Aykut's profiles for more information.  

Prof. Anja Neundorf gave the keynote speech at the 4th Annual Democracy & Elections and Comparative Politics conference, organized at the University of Manchester. The theme of this year's conference was "Democracy Under Pressure." During her keynote speech, Prof. Neundorf introduced the DEMED and shared findings from the working paper entitled "Can Online Civic Education Induce Democratic Citizenship? Experimental Evidence from a New Democracy."

 Today marks the official start dat of DEMED Project, funded by ERC Consolidator grant. DEMED will run for five years, until August 2025.