We are delighted to announce that LISER’s Living Conditions department, together with the University of Luxembourg and the Zentrum fir Politesch Bildung, is organizing the workshop “Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), between academic research and societal impact” on February 13-14, 2025.

The event will be held in the LISER conference room “Jane Jacobs” (Maison des Sciences Humaines, 11 Porte des Sciences, L-4366 Esch-Alzette).

Attendance is free but registration is mandatory. Please make sure to register by February 10.

Objective

Over the last two decades, Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have spread throughout Europe and beyond. By allowing voters to compare their preferences with those of parties and candidates running for an election over a range of policy issues on a single online platform, they reduce the costs to voters associated with the gathering and processing of electoral information. Often provided by civic education agencies or academics and generally benefitting from wide media coverage, these tools have by now become a vital part of online election campaigns worldwide, being used by dozens of millions of voters.

Social science research, mostly done by political scientists, has already addressed several aspects of these digital platforms that aim at increasing informed and critical public participation in the electoral process. In this workshop, we take stock of existing and ongoing studies on the design of VAAs, the impact they have on political interest, knowledge but also on voting behaviour, as well as the potential of the wealth of VAA-generated data for research on representation, party politics and public policies. In addition to presenting innovative research on VAAs by politicial scientists, this workshop benefits from the recent and welcome input of communication scholars, computer scientists and economists to this burgeoning field.

The first panel is dedicated to the role of VAAs in civic education. Contributions will present the results of ongoing cutting-edge research on the use and impact of VAAs specifically dedicated to the youth. The second panel will provide an array of the most promising ways to improve the efficiency of VAAs and maximize user experience. On the second day we will take a tour of the candidate-based VAAs in use in Europe. Like smartwielen, which has been provided in Luxembourg since 2009, these tools allow users to find not only parties, but also individual candidates that match the most with their own positions. Presentations will highlight the specificities of each of those VAAs, the research they already contributed to, and the potential agenda for further use of these data in broader projects and in comparative perspective.

Program

DAY 1 | February 13

13.45 - 14.00: Welcome address by Dr. Frédéric Docquier, LISER Vice-CEO, and Prof. Robert Harmsen, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, University of Luxembourg

14.00 - 16.00: PANEL 1 | VAAs and civic education – chair: Raphaël Kies

• Theodora Helimäki - University of Helsinki
  ‘I don’t get it so why bother?’ - The effect of VAAs on young people’s political perceptions in Finland
• Laura Uyttendaele - UCLouvain and Matthias Van Campenhout - UAntwerpen.
  Understanding VAAs: Unpacking problems and innovating solutions for better user engagement among youth
• Stefan Marshall - Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
  Tools or Toys? Voting Advice Applications from a civic education perspective

16.00 - 16.30: Coffee break

16.30 - 18.30: PANEL 2 | New Developments in VAA design: improving effectiveness and user experience – chair: Patrick Dumont

• Naomi Kamoen and Christine Liebrecht - Tilburg University, School of Humanities and Digital Sciences.
  From Buttons to Bots: Exploring the Impact of Enhanced Features in Voting Advice Applications
• Fynn Bachmann - Universität Zürich, Department of Informatics.
  Adaptive questionnaires for Voting Advice Applications in practice: A study on user experience, trust and recommendation accuracy
• Veikko Isotalo - University of Helsinki.
  Understanding VAA usage behaviour in big and experimental data

DAY 2 | February 14

9.00 - 12.30: PANEL 3 | Candidate-based VAAs: design, impact and potential for research – chair: Philippe Van Kerm

• Patrick Dumont - Australian National University and LISER, Raphaël Kies & Philippe van Kerm - University of Luxembourg.
  Luxembourg’s smartwielen project: First findings
• Javier Olivera - LISER.
  Using smartwielen data: Attitudes towards taxation and redistribution in highly diverse localities
• Jan Fivaz - Universität Bern.
  Smartvote in Switzerland: Doing research with candidate-based VAA data
• 10.30 - 11.00: Coffee break
• Rory Costello - University of Limerick.
  VAAs as a tool for ranking candidates in a preferential electoral system: Evidence from Ireland
• Ainé Ramonaite - Vilnius University.
  Integrating VAA into a national election study: The Lithuanian experience
• Mathias Tromborg and Andreas Videbæk Jensen - Aarhus Universitet.
  VAA use in Denmark and prospects for comparative research

~ END OF THE WORKSHOP’S OPEN SESSIONS ~

12.30 - 13.00: Sandwich lunch for guest presenters

13.00 - 14.00: Wrapping up group meeting | Collaborative and comparative work on VAAs

Organisers

• LISER - Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (Living Conditions)
• The University of Luxembourg (PLDP – Luxembourg’s platform of participatory democracy)
• The ZpB – Zentrum fir Politesch Bildung

Smartwielen

At the origins of this international workshop, LISER (Living Conditions) hosts Prof. Patrick Dumont (ANU) as part of the project “smartwielen: Use and impact at the 2023 national and 2024 European elections”, which was funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) through the Grant INTER MOBILITY/2022/ID/17569437/Smartwielen. The University of Luxembourg (PLDP) and the Zentrum fir politesch Bildung co-funded the smartwielen platform for the 2023 national and 2024 European elections and as such were partners to that research project; the PLPD also runs additional research projects using data from these VAAs.