Project Description

The use of an exemplar refers to the use of the narrative of a concrete person who is personally affected by the issue – to make otherwise complex social problems more understandable and interesting. In my project at AIAS, I will investigate why some types of social media exemplars are so powerful in triggering digital engagement and shaping factual perceptions of social problems and attributions of government responsibility, while other types of exemplars are uninfluential. How can the impact of misleading unrepresentative social media exemplars be mitigated? The results from the project advance knowledge of a) the degree of diversity in how societal problems are illustrated with social media exemplars, b) how social media exemplars shape democratic engagement on social media, and c) the digital sources of mobilization, factual (mis)perceptions, and democratic responsibility attributions in the mass public.

Short Bio

Lene Aarøe’s research field is political psychology and political communication. She is the Principal Investigator of the project “Exemplar Democracy: Psychological Biases and the Impact of Exemplars on Factual Perceptions and Attributions of Government Responsibility”, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. She has studied political psychology and political communication as a visiting scholar at Stony Brook University and University of Michigan. Methodologically, she works with social media data, experiments, survey data, register data, and biological data. See also Lene Aarøe’s Google Scholar profile for an additional overview of her research.