PRiSMa. Political Representation in the Age of Social Media

This five-year research project, funded by the Momentum Program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and hosted by the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, seeks to explore the meaning of political representation in the context of social media. Our research group, comprising senior, early-career, and junior researchers in collaboration with international partners, adopts a cross-national research design to empirically and conceptually examine how political representation operates on the central platforms of today’s political communication ecosystem and assesses its implications for democratic politics. 

We investigate the dynamics between institutional political actors and citizens, the responsiveness of political actors to the political activities of citizens on social media, and the role of non-electoral actors who effectively advocate for representational demands on these platforms. Additionally, we address the new forms of political inequality that emerge as social media activity can be intimidating for many individuals due to psychological or social barriers. Consequently, in analyzing patterns of political representation, we focus on the activities of both electoral and non-electoral actors and examine citizens’ experiences, practices, and sentiments within these dynamics. 

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