Nationalism, populism and social networks in a comparative perspective
Duration: 1.7.2023 - 30.6.2026
Programme: APVV-22-0242
Principal investigator: Ing. Mgr. Miloslav Bahna, PhD.
Project team at the Institute for Sociology of SAS:
Mgr. Jozef Zagrapan, PhD., Mgr. Robert Klobucký, Mgr. MA. Ondrej Buchel, PhD., Mgr. Ángel Torres-Adán, PhD., Mgr. Milan Zeman, CSc., Mgr. Vladimír Hurban
Project team at FiF UK:
doc. Mgr. Roman Džambazovič, PhD., doc. Mgr. Daniel Gerbery, PhD., Mgr. Pavol Baboš, PhD.
Project team at the FSEV UK:
PhDr. Oľga Gyárfášová, PhD.
The project will provide new insights into the links between the three phenomena under study – nationalism, populism in politics and the use of social networks in political and civic participation. The analysis of these three related themes will take place both in a local Slovak and a comparative context. The comparative context of the project will be provided by data collection within the framework of two international comparative research programs – the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) – in which the members of the research team have been active for a long time. The implementation of the modules ISSP 2023 National Identity and Citizenship, ISSP 2024 Digital Societies and module 6 of the CSES research series will allow both to analyze the phenomena studied in the framework of the submitted project and to ensure the presence of Slovakia in the analyses of foreign authors dedicated to these topics working with the ISSP and CSES datasets. The project will empirically analyze the relationship between nationalism and populism, the nature of which is disputed in the literature. Populist attitudes and the determinants of demand for populist parties and politicians will also be analyzed. The aim will also be to understand the relationship between the use of social networks and indicators of civic engagement. The project will also look at the relationships between digital civic participation, societal polarization and the erosion of social and institutional trust in political institutions. The datasets generated during the project will be made freely available both through the Slovak Archive of Social Data (SASD) and as part of ISSP and CSES integrated datasets in the GESIS archive.