• Project

    Understanding Global Governance

    Most citizens do not know much about International Organizations (IOs). Even for the case of the European Union (EU), arguably the IO with the strongest media presence, factual knowledge about it is much lower than for national political institutions. Yet, citizens are more and more frequently asked to form attitudes towards IOs. Whether it is in the context of electoral campaigns, on the occasion of referendums or simply during an international crisis with a strong involvement from an IO; research on the politicization of IOs shows that these institutions no longer exist decoupled from politics on the national level. Still, many German citizens do not know the basic facts about the EU and the UN. This contrast between low knowledge and rising awareness about IOs could lead to the conclusion, that citizens base their attitudes towards IOs exclusively on either their beliefs about national politics or that they rely on the public position of trusted political elites.
    We know very little about the role of information during attitude formation on IOs. Compared to other topics, IOs are complex and abstract, which makes it very unlikely that citizens can remember detailed information about them. Politicization has led to a considerable increase of media attention on IOs, but there have been no studies evaluating if the higher salience of a topic also leads to an increase of available information in the media. However, even if high-quality information were available, it would not be a guarantee that citizens use said information to form attitudes. Currently, there is no systematic research on the usage of information about IOs. Therefore, the central research question of my proposal is: How do citizens use information to form attitudes towards Inter-national Organizations? Understanding how citizens use information could help us understand how the actions and abilities of IOs can be better communicated.

  • Career

    since 2019 Member of the Graduate School of Politics (GraSP) at the University of Münster.
    since 2018 Research Associate, Chair of Methods of Empirical Social Science, University of Münster, Germany
    2016-2018 M.A. Applied Political Science at the University of Freiburg and the Sciences Po Aix (IEP Aix-en-Provence.
    2016-2017 Student Research Assistant, Chair of Governance in Multi-Level-Systems, University of Freiburg, Germany.
    2013-2016 B.A. Applied Political Science at the University of Freiburg and the Sciences Po Aix (IEP Aix-en-Provence).

  • Publications

    Talks

    05/19 AKER Annual Conference: Domestic Politics and Regional Organizations: Analyzing Domestic Elite (De)Legitimization, Public Knowledge and Citizens’ Attitudes

    04/19 ECPR Joint Sessions: Political Knowledge about International Organizations

    02/19 DVPW Research Group Academic Teaching: Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching in Binational Degrees

  • Further Information

    Research interests

    • Global Governance
    • Political Behavior
    • Experimental Methods