Digitalization and Political Behavior
LMU Munich · Prof. Dr. Alexander Wuttke
Led by Prof. Dr. Alexander Wuttke, the teaching and research unit investigates the state of liberal democracy from the perspective of ordinary citizens and explores the challenges and opportunities afforded by digitalization. We strive for transparency, rigor, and inclusivity in our research culture. We use computational social science approaches and a broad array of survey-, field-, lab- and quasi-experimental methods for causal inference.
News
New Pre-Print: AI Conversational Interviewing: Scaling Up Semi-Structured and In-depth Interviews
June 2026
Alexander Wuttke, Max Melchior Lang, Christopher Klamm, Quirin Würschinger, Frauke Kreuter
Public opinion research has long faced a trade-off between depth and scale: standardized surveys enable large-scale measurement but restrict respondents to researcher-defined categories, obscuring the diversity of unexpected considerations that underlie public sentiment. More conversational interviews provide richer insights through open-ended probing, but their reliance on trained human interviewers has kept them difficult to scale. This study introduces AI Conversational Interviewing as a method for collecting open-ended public opinion data at scale, pursuing three objectives: to demonstrate the analytical value of conversational text data for questions beyond the reach of closed-ended items; to assess the method’s practical viability through participants’ own evaluations; and to inform implementation by experimentally comparing voice-based, chat-based, and free-choice interview modes. We conducted a study combining an AI-led interview with a standardized survey on migration policy among 571 respondents recruited via Prolific and Payback Panel. The findings establish AI Conversational Interviewing as a viable and valuable addition to the social-science toolkit. The conversational transcripts surface considerations and reasoning that a comprehensive standardized battery does not capture such as markedly different mental models of migration among subgroups with similar attitudes levels. Among respondents who completed the interview, evaluations of the AI interview were at or above those of the standardized survey across modes, although completion itself varied by condition. By releasing open data and open-source pipeline materials, the study contributes to a growing literature on harnessing artificial intelligence to expand the methods of public opinion measurement.
New Project Acquired: BIDT DemocraGPT
February 2026
DemocraGPT develops an AI-based conversation training tool to help citizens engage in constructive democratic dialogue, even on controversial issues. The system simulates challenging conversation partners and trains users to respond empathically, manage defensiveness, and tolerate ambiguity. Tested through field experiments, it aims to bring people back into meaningful democratic exchange—online and offline.
New Project Aquired: Emmy Noether Funding
February 2026
Alexander Wuttke receives Emmy Noether funding
Why do people profess support for democracy yet vote for politicians who undermine it? Alexander Wuttke, Junior Professor of Digitalization and Political Behavior at LMU, is tackling this question with a €1.17 million Emmy Noether grant from the DFG. His project, Predictably Paradoxical: Leveraging AI to Map the Democratic Mind, uses AI-supported interviews to explore how contradictory democratic attitudes arise, combining large-scale surveys with in-depth, human-like conversations across 13 countries.
New Project Acquired: Democratic Persuasion
October 2025
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved funding for the three-year project “How to Make the Case for Democracy” at the Teaching and Research Unit for Digitalization and Political Behavior (Prof. Dr. Alexander Wuttke).
The project addresses a key challenge of contemporary democracies: democratic backsliding increasingly occurs through elections and the decisions of ordinary citizens. It therefore examines how democratic support can be strengthened through effective communication.
Adopting a multidimensional view of democratic support, the project develops and tests theory-driven interventions tailored to different attitudinal profiles. These interventions are evaluated using large-scale survey experiments, in-depth online conversations, and in-person group discussions.
The project aims to generate practical insights into how pro-democratic communication can strengthen democratic resilience at the citizen level.
New Team Members
October 2025
Welcome Josefina Sommer and Philipp Mendoza to the Democratic Persuasion Team! They’ve joined the DFG Project “Democratic Persuasion” to experimentally test how to make the case for democracy.
New Scientist reports on AI study
July 2025
Title: “How government use of AI could hurt democracy”
Teaser: Countries are eager to use AI to automate some government processes, but this risks eroding citizens’ trust and feelings of democratic control – because AI mistakes can ruin their lives.