Empower Citizens In The Digital Age: Creating A Vote Leaflet For An Upcoming Vote Via A Digital Democratic Innovation - Info and Reading Options

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Presentation of our Digital Democratic Innovation Digital Democratic Innovations (DDIs), represent democratic innovations such as mini-publics held online (see, e.g., Kennedy et al. 2021). In our study, we use a self-developed DDI to let citizens create a vote leaflet with pro and contra arguments for an upcoming popular vote held in Switzerland. Research goals Our first goal is to assess the effects of DDI-participation on political engagement variables including political interest, respect, trust, competence, and internal efficacy (RQ1). Our second goal is to understand the capacity of DDIs to generate political legitimacy (RQ2). In particular, we research whether having information about the process held on the DDI and the produced output positively affects non-participants’ legitimacy of the process and the output created (i.e., vote leaflet). Besides, we test if a gamification feature of the DDI enhances participation in the DDI (RQ3) and we will further examine the functioning of the platform's peer-review feature by investigating the extent to which argument congruence influences peer-review decisions (RQ4). Procedure In this study, we invite citizens (Swiss German citizens between the age of 18 and 79 who use the internet at least once a week) to participate in a self-developed DDI dubbed “Demokratiefabrik”. Here, they can develop a vote leaflet with arguments in favor and against the issue on the ballot in a popular vote in Switzerland held in June 2023. In the first step, citizens will state their willingness to participate. After stating their willingness, a first survey (T1), in which some political attitudes, variables on political participation, and sociodemographic variables will be collected. Citizens willing to participate will then be randomly divided into treatment and control groups. In the experiment, 1000 citizens of the treatment group will have access to the DDI and thus help develop the vote leaflet (i.e., participants). 400 citizens of the control group receive no access to the DDI. Although they wanted to participate, they were not selected to do so (non-participants). Both groups will then be surveyed again after the vote leaflet is created (T2) and after the vote (T3). Moreover, we will survey (T2bis) 400 randomly drawn Swiss German citizens entitled to vote. This sample will be comparable to the baseline of our sample recruited to participate in our experiment study (Swiss German citizens between the age of 18 and 79 who use the internet at least once a week). Since our control group only consists of participants who showed interest in participating in our DDI, it is not representative of the broader public. Asking a randomly selected sample of Swiss German citizens about their opinions on the Demokratiefabrik and the resulting output (vote leaflet) will give a more representative picture of what the broader public, including citizens showing more skepticism towards online participatory projects, think about digital democratic innovations.

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