Digital Democracy
This seminar gives students practical exposure to conducting research in the area of digital democracy. It builds on the reading-based seminar in the fall term in which students developed their own detailed research design. In this second part of the two-semester cycle, students carry out their research projects while receiving regular guidance and feedback throughout the process. Substantive and methodological focus topics will be discussed where appropriate in addition to the individual feedback on the progress of each project.
Capstone Course “National dominant narratives in Switzerland and their impact on overall political discourse”
The project aims to measure dominant national political narratives in Switzerland and how they affect political processes. This entails, first, systematically validating the existing (quantitative) measurement of narratives and potentially further improving the current methodology if needed. Second, analyze and interpret the existing narratives using a mixed-methods approach. This includes, in particular, discussing their impact on broader political discourses, processes and policies as well as electoral outcomes in Switzerland. The capstone project supports and complements the ongoing work of the Society for the Common Good (SCG) / Pro Futuris on Swiss national political narratives. You will be able to directly build on existing work that has already been done, first validating and, as needed, extending the automated approach for narrative extraction. And then together with the team at the Society for the Common Good work with the extracted narratives, their interpretation etc. The specific tasks (outlined in more detail under below) were developed together with Andreas Müller at SCG and his team to complement their ongoing work.