When people engage in political actions, it affects not only their environment but also the individuals themselves. The latter is called self-effects. Initially studied in offline contexts, social media renewed interest in this phenomenon as socially mediated political actions such as political talk or sharing political posts have been found to affect people’s self-concepts. The effect of one’s behavior on one’s self-concept is moderated by the degree of perceived publicness, as public actions are more salient and create public commitment. While some studies show that greater perceived publicness strengthens self-effects, others have been unable to replicate this effect.

For many, voting is followed by political expression on social media, including sharing that they voted or discussing politics. Social media platforms, thus, create a publicness of an otherwise anonymous action, potentially increasing personal commitment to one’s self-concept. Therefore, our overarching hypothesis is that while the act of voting itself may increase people's political identity, political self-efficacy, subjective political knowledge, and political interest (Hypothesis 1), this self-effect of voting will be more pronounced for voters who a) share who they voted for on social media and b) engaged in political talk on social media (Hypothesis 2).

These hypotheses will be tested using two samples from two different countries during federal elections. Sample 1 was gathered during the U.S. presidential election in 2024 drawing on a two-wave survey with N=1147 participants. These were surveyed a week before the election and one day after the election (asking for their voting action, their political self-concepts and their use of social media in the context of the election). Sample 2 will be gathered during the German general election on February 23, 2025. Analogously to the U.S. survey, we will measure participants’ political self-concepts, their voting actions, and the social media use before and after the election.

Today, reminders of war are everywhere, appearing on living room screens, in social media feeds, and shaping public discourse. Prior research suggests that people are drawn to negative topics in the media and distressing images in laboratory settings, despite the psychological and health costs of such engagement. Interest, defined here as the accumulative positive semantic emotion felt towards learning about a topic, may help explain this engagement. People may feel distress about the topic itself (e.g., sadness) but still experience a sense of reward from learning (e.g., interest). However, little is known about how interest in newly encountered conflicts develops over time, particularly when individuals engage with war-related information voluntarily. Research on neutral topics suggests that interest follows a curvilinear pattern, rising with increased knowledge before eventually declining. Here, we investigate whether interest in war follows a similar trajectory in digital, self-directed learning environments.

In two studies (N=299), participants freely explored short texts about different aspects of 8 civil wars, including casualties, motivations, and historical context, mirroring the user-driven nature of online media consumption. After each text, they rated their interest in the war and their emotional responses to it. They also reported their familiarity with each war and the compassion they felt toward those affected. This design captures how individuals navigate war-related information in an open-ended format, similar to informal learning through digital media.

We hypothesized that interest initially increases as knowledge accumulates but eventually plateaus or declines as the costs of further engagement outweigh the benefits. We tested this with multilevel growth curve modeling. Our findings contribute to understanding how war-related interest evolves in self-guided learning contexts, offering insights into the psychological mechanisms that drive engagement with conflict in media.

Research into misinformation has steadily increased in recent years. One aspect that has received a lot of attention but has not yet been exhaustively researched is the importance of political orientation. The rigidity-of-the-right and rigidity-of-the-extremes hypotheses are often used to study differences across the political spectrum (Jost et al., 2007). These approaches suggest that individuals on the right or at both extremes are more prone to rigid information processing, leading to greater susceptibility to attitude-congruent misinformation. One might argue that mixed results may be explained by the argument that it’s not simply “the rightists” who may be particularly susceptible to misinformation, but the social rightists (as opposed to the economic right-wingers) (Costello et al., 2023). Therefore, this study differentiates between economic and social conservatism and tests which asymmetries regarding the belief in (attitude-congruent) misinformation exist. Therefore, the research questions are: (1) Are there asymmetries between left- and right-orientated individuals regarding the processing of misinformation? And (2) are socially conservative individuals particularly susceptible to misinformation?

To investigate this, an online experiment is conducted (n ≈ 1000), in which participants evaluate the credibility of several news headlines. The stimuli are manipulated regarding the veracity (true vs. false), and the political leaning (social left, social right, economic left, economic right, neutral). Signal detection theory is used to gain a detailed insight into the processing of true and false information. In this way, a distinction can be made between the ability to discriminate between true and false (truth discernment) and the susceptibility to various biases (confirmation bias, disconfirmation bias, response bias, ...). Data will be collected in February 2025, results can be presented at the conference.

The use of social media during election campaigns for political microtargeting has been a research focus for over a decade, particularly regarding its effects on voting behaviour. Studies that connect the actual media contents users see during campaigns with their political attitudes and party preferences remain still scarce, largely due to methodological challenges. Most available webtracking tools, which can automatically collect media contents and user data, only work on desktops, despite the increasing shift to mobile social media use. To gain better insights into how exposure to actual political ads can affect political attitudes and party preferences, political ads must be recorded and linked to survey data. In two studies, we tracked political ads on social media before the 2024 EU parliamentary election and the 2025 German federal election using a novel mobile ad tracking app. We link the tracked political ads with survey data focusing on political preferences, interest, trust in democracy, and privacy concerns to assess the impact of political microtargeting.

Previous studies indicate that campaigns can shape citizens’ voting choices (Chu et al., 2024). However, an important unanswered question is whether people primarily receive advertising from parties they already like, which could reduce or completely neutralise the impact of targeting. Moreover, longitudinal survey data indicate that the perception of targeting might have both positive and negative effects on democratic societies by increasing political interest but decreasing trust in democracy (Matthes et al., 2022), such claims must be further corroborated with actually received political ads. Accordingly, we hypothesise that individuals with stronger party preferences will receive more ads from that party, and the number of ads received will influence party preferences. Additionally, increased ad exposure may enhance political interest and subjective knowledge but could also erode trust in democracy due to concerns over data misuse and electoral manipulation.

Democratic education as a cross-sectional task in teacher education is often not mandatory in Germany, although it is essential for students' social participation and critical thinking skills. Teachers therefore need to be continuously professionalized in order to strengthen their practical and didactic skills to promote democratic education in the classroom. Accordingly, a digital learning platform for (prospective) teachers was developed as an Open Educational Resource (OER) based on the concept of 'Active Citizenship'.

The OER contains practical resources (teaching and learning materials, didactic approaches and methods) to implement democratic education in lessons across subjects and school types and to equip teachers with the basic skills required for this. In addition to interactive and gamified content, the platform offers a community of practice in which teachers can collaborate and share their experiences.

This article presents the structure and design of the digital resource with a focus on interactive and collaborative learning elements that encourage active engagement with the content. The empirical results of the accompanying evaluation will be reported and discussed. The data collection with a sample of N = 20 teachers is carried out in a pre-post design in which quantitative and qualitative approaches are combined.

In addition to fundamental quality dimensions of OER such as user-friendliness and functionality (Zawacki-Richter and Mayrberger, 2017), the evaluation also looks at the development of teachers' competences on the basis of the Kirkpatrick model (Kirkpatrick D. L, & Kirkpatrick J. D., 2006). This involves analyzing how teachers perceive the materials (Reaction), to what extent they acquire new knowledge about democratic education in the classroom (Learning), what effects the materials have on their teaching behavior (Behavior) and how they evaluate their use and application in their role as teachers (Results).