The German Society for Online Research e.V. (DGOF) annually supports innovative research projects in the field of online research. For the 2025 competition, a total of €6,000 was available, which is now distributed to three projects dealing with political participation, elections, and political communication in the digital space. In addition to CAIS researcher Dr. Marco Wähner from the Research Data & Methods team, Klara Lehmann and Sebastian Schirner (ifo Institute Munich) as well as Felix Schmirler (Free University of Berlin) are awarded.
About Marco Wähner’s Project
Political participation is a central pillar of democratic societies, but it is unevenly distributed. Especially highly educated and politically interested citizens participate regularly. Marco Wähner will investigate in his project why and under which conditions people with fewer participation resources also take part in online consultations on topics such as mobility and infrastructure.
For his study, he will conduct a discrete-choice experiment with around 1,000 internet users in Germany. The participants evaluate various hypothetical participation scenarios that differ in terms of public benefit orientation, effort, compensation, and social context. Methodologically, the study adapts established methods from economic and transport science for political participation research. The goal is to gain insights that contribute to making online participation more inclusive.
Decision by an Interdisciplinary Jury
The projects were selected by an interdisciplinary jury of representatives from academic and applied online research. The chair was Dr. Carina Cornesse (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences). Other members were Dr. Barbara Felderer (GESIS), Lisa Dust (Civey Germany GmbH), Dr. Frederik Funke (LimeSurvey & datenmethoden.de), Dr. Olaf Wenzel (Wenzel Market Research), Dr. Felix Victor Münch (Leibniz Institute for Media Research | HBI), Manfred Niesel (Campus Media GmbH), and Yannick Rieder (Janssen-Cilag GmbH).