DIGSSCORE Seminar: Mobilising migrants: social media campaigns can mobilise hard to reach populations

Katharina Lawall, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Politics of Feelings, University of London/Royal Holloway, will present for us today. Her presentation is titled: "Mobilising migrants: social media campaigns can mobilise hard to reach populations". 

The event is in a hybrid format, you are welcome to join us for lunch from the Corner room at DIGSSCORE. Food is provided on a first-come first-served basis. Zoom link for digital attendance.

Abstract:

In Europe today, there is still a large gap in political participation between immigrants and native citizens. For example, although mobile EU citizens (EU citizens residing outside their country of origin) have the right to vote in local elections in their country of residence, they often do not participate in these elections. These gaps in participation matter, as they can exacerbate existing political inequalities. This paper tests if Get Out The Vote (GOTV) social media interventions are effective in increasing the political participation of mobile EU citizens. To do so, we conducted a digital field experiment in cooperation with civil society organisations in the run up to local elections in Germany. Mobile EU citizens were randomly assigned to either a GOTV social media campaign (a Facebook page or a Facebook group), or to a control condition. Being assigned to the social media campaign has a significant and substantial positive effect on self-reported turnout, increasing turnout from 38% (in the control condition) to 52% (in the campaign treatment). These results suggest that social media campaigns can increase political participation among hard to reach populations, such as mobile EU citizens. These findings also have larger implications for representation in the EU, highlighting the importance of civil society organisations’ work in closing participation gaps.