18.06.2012 Thomas Vitiello collects Elizabeth H. Nelson Prize for best paper ...

Thomas Vitiello, Ali Çarkoğlu and Mert Moral have received the Elizabeth H. Nelson Prize prize for the Best Paper from a Society in Transition.  The presentation took place at the 2012 WAPOR annual conference in Hong-Kong 14-16 June.

Thomas Vitiello is an ELECDEM early stage researcher at Sabanci University in Turkey.  Ali Çarkoğlu is an ELECDEM associate partner at Köç University.    The title of the paper is "Voter Advise Applications in Practice. Answers to Some Key Questions from Turkey".

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the effect of the media events that promoted the Turkish Voter Advice Application website in the 2011 Turkish Parliamentary elections. Our research design combines data on the dates and medium used for the promotion of the VAA with factual data on the number of connections received, the recommendations received by users, and the ‘propensity to vote’ (PTV) for each party by users. By running a multiple-interrupted time series (MITS) model, we find that there is a ‘double-screen’ effect in the promotion campaign. In fact, the VAA was promoted through traditional media, such as television and newspapers, and through internet-based communications. We also find that the political parallelism characterizing the Turkish media system has an important impact on the composition of the users. Voters supporting conservative parties only were attracted to the website when conservative leaning media mentioned it.

The 2012 WAPOR annual conference (World Association for Public Opinion) annual conference was held in Hong-Kong on 14-16 June at the  University of Hong Kong.  Over 130 papers were accepted for presentation at the conference.