A new study by the HBI investigates how people in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania inform themselves about politics and other socially relevant topics in their federal state and what their general attitudes towards politics are.
The telephone survey will start in February 2023 and will last about six weeks. It will be conducted by the social research company IPSOS. Cooperation partners and third-party funders include the
State Agency for Civic Education Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (LpB MV) and the
Media Authority Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
So Far, Hardly Any Findings on State Level
Findings on news use, such as those of the
#UseTheNews study, show that journalistically and professionally produced media offerings are not the only suitable source of relevant information, but that users also turn to other actors, especially those appearing in social media.
Although these and similar studies provide solid insights into the media usage behaviour of Germany's population as a whole, they hardly allow for statements about individual federal states due to their sample size.
Focus on Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
This gives reason to focus a study on political information behaviour of a population for which only few reliable findings are available. It is particularly interesting to focus the attention on a federal state from the East, which the recently published
report (in German)
of the Federal Government Commissioner for Eastern Germany, Carsten Schneider, attested to a growing disenchantment with politics.
The new study should help to get an overview of the politically oriented media use and political culture in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as well as to develop strategies to reach population groups that largely avoid the use of news and political content more effectively.
Head of study:
Dr. Sascha Hölig
Research assistant:
Leonie Wunderlich
(Image: Yulia Buchatskaya / unsplash)
Hamburg, 9 February 2023
