Media Exposure and Opinion Formation in an Age of Information Overload (MEOF) – Survey Germany

The research project, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, investigates the consequences of online media presence for political preferences and behaviour. The study was conducted by YouGov Germany. During the survey period 13 July 2017 to 14 October 2019, German citizens aged 18 and over with internet access were surveyed in online interviews (CAWI) on the following topics: Political preferences and behavior, social media use, media use, issue attitudes, political knowledge, opinions on online harassment regulation. Respondents were selected through quota sampling from an online access panel.<br>1. Political preferences and political behaviour: Interest in politics; satisfaction with democracy; left-right self-ranking; intention to vote; voting decision in the Bundestag election (party preference: First vote and second vote); certainty of voting decision; expected winner in own constituency (candidate of which party); expected result of the respective parties in the 2017 federal election (in percentage points); participation in the last federal election in 2013 and voting decision (first vote and second vote); sympathy scalometer for the individual political parties; satisfaction with the performance of the Grand Coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD; sympathy scalometer for selected top politicians; Chancellor preference for Angela Merkel or Martin Schulz; coalition preference; opinion on extremism (we should finally have the courage to have a strong sense of nationalism again, pride in being a German, under certain circumstances a dictatorship is the better form of government, socialism is a good idea that has only been poorly executed so far); TV duel between Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz watched; assessment of the performance of the two candidates in this TV duel; social distance due to support for different parties; political efficacy (Efficacy); participation in the 2017 federal election; reasons for one´s own voting decision (e. g. this party represents the right position on important political issues, this party has the best politicians, etc.); expected coalition after the 2017 federal election; participation in the 2017 federal election and voting decision (party preference second vote); feeling of restriction in political discussions; expected election winner in the US House of Representatives elections (Democrats or Republicans); certainty regarding one´s own expectation of the election outcome in the US.

2. Use of social media: account on selected social media sites; Twitter: usage behaviour (frequency of reading Twitter timeline or writing tweets); network size (followees and followers); frequency of receiving political news or comments from different sources (friends, relatives, acquaintances, news organisations, journalists, politicians, parties or political campaigns); proportion of accounts sharing own political views; frequency of political usage behaviour on Twitter (tweeting one´s view on current political issues, sharing news with followers, reading news articles from people one follows, reading news or information from politicians or parties, reading personal opinions of contacts on political issues, liking political information or opinions); corresponding questions were asked in the case of Facebook usage.

3. Media use: frequency of internet use on computer or laptop as well as on smartphone or tablet; purpose of use (online shopping, online banking, social media, professional work, email or video communication, etc.); frequency of use of selected news sites and news portals (e.g. Spiegel.de, Tagesschau. de); frequency of information about politics and world affairs from various sources (TV, newspapers or printed magazines, radio, online media, social media, personal conversations); most frequently used TV news programmes, newspapers or printed magazines, etc. for political information (open); Wikipedia: Frequency of use of Wikipedia; Wikipedia evaluation; frequency of use of Wikipedia via the following ways: I surf the website directly, I come to Wikipedia via links on other websites; Activities on Wikipedia pages (e.g. search function used, articles edited to add new information).

4. Attitude towards political issues: most important political issues in Germany; attitude towards various statements on the following topics: Deportation of economic migrants, coal energy, mandatory adaptation of immigrants to German culture, tax increases for high earners, stronger cooperation within the European Union, tax cuts, protection against terrorist attacks, Brexit negotiations, fake news in social media channels, German involvement in international crises, investment in infrastructure, upper limit for refugees, violence at demonstrations, retrofitting or exchange of older diesel vehicles, resignation of Horst Seehofer as interior minister, SPD leaving the grand coalition, sexual harassment (mee too); particularly urgent topics and problems in Germany.

5. Political knowledge: First vote/second vote; election of the Federal Chancellor; party affiliation of various top German politicians; top candidates of the parties; political events that actually took place in the last few weeks.

6. Offline social networks: variety of political views of personal contacts.

7. Wahl-O-Mat experiment: willingness to use the election information tool Wahl-O-Mat; actual use of Wahl-O-Mat; outcome: Agreement rates with the parties; party with the highest agreement; perceived positions of the individual parties on various political contentious issues (higher taxation of diesel fuel for passenger cars, obligation to delete fake news for operators of internet sites, statutory health insurance for all, tax-free acquisition of owner-occupied residential property, permanent promotion of the expansion of renewable energies, annual cap on the admission of new asylum seekers); own position on the aforementioned political contentious issues.

8. Opinions on the regulation of online harassment: personal experience with hate speech; opinion on the legal regulation of group-specific insulting or hateful statements in public (Germans, Muslims, Jews, women, Christians, immigrants, neo-Nazis, government); designation of selected cases as hate speech (e.g. racist insult of an ethnic minority); responsibility of different actors to act against hate speech on the internet (victims, witnesses, online platforms, politicians, judiciary and police, employers of hate speech spreaders); support vs. rejection of the unpopular opinions in social media: People should be allowed to practice their religion freely in our country, Muslims out of Germany. Protect the German people!, It is important that people can use the internet without government censorship, People should be allowed to express unpopular opinions publicly, even if others find these opinions deeply offensive).

9. Vignette experiment on regulation of online harassment with different attributes related to topic, message category target, message target, gender, religion and ideology of sender, name of sender and profile photo of sender, message category of sender, message with group category and topic, categorisation of target in sender message, sender message, response of target, response category of target: Assessment of the offensive and hateful nature of different messages; preferred actions (platform provider should take no action, message should be deleted, writer should not be able to send further messages to the target of this message, writer should be secondarily banned from the platform, writer should be permanently banned from the platform, no further action should be taken, sender of the message should lose their job, sender of the message should pay a fine, sender of the message should receive a prison sentence).

Demography: sex; age; month and year of birth; education: highest level of schooling; highest level of education; relationship status; marital status; employment situation; occupation; net household income; net personal income; federal state.

Additionally coded were: Wave; respondent ID; date of interview start and end; weight; group assignment vignette experiment; vignette ID.