Media Use and Distrust in Elections in Germany
From June 2026 to May 2027, the Strategic Research Funding Fund at HHU is funding a qualitative study on media use and political distrust in Germany.
Project Outline
A technical glitch in the transmission of results from the 2024 Saxon state election led to the brief publication of an incorrect election result. Although the error was quickly corrected, a loss of trust remained among a segment of the population. On social media, the correction spread significantly less widely than the original misinformation. At the same time, political actors exploited the situation to fuel doubts about the integrity of the electoral process. For several days, the notion of a supposedly manipulated result dominated the public debate.
This example highlights a central question facing modern democracies: How does political distrust arise in a digitalized public sphere? Unlike in the United States, this topic has received little research attention in Germany to date.
The project examines how political distrust of elections arises and what role the media—particularly social media—play in this process. The focus is on citizens’ subjective experiences and interpretations. To this end, we conduct qualitative interviews and focus group discussions to better understand how people perceive and interpret information about elections and how they relate this to their trust in or distrust of democratic institutions.
