The Design of Voting Advice Applications: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

Abstract

Despite their prominence in election campaigns, Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) often prove to be particularly controversial. VAA designers often find themselves in conflict with political parties, while VAAs are sometimes forced offline due to complaints. Quite often, however, the concern for ethical issues about providing fair and unbiased “advice” to VAA users hides deeper theoretical and methodological debates. The panel therefore welcomes theoretical contributions that aim to link the design of VAAs to major voting theories, as well as empirical contributions illustrating particular advantages or pitfalls in VAA design. How voting theories inform the ways in which questions are formulated and information is presented to the users? How VAA design can ensure the fair representation of different parties and their views? How VAAs designers aim to serve citizens by using different dissemination strategies for their VAAs? How can we evaluate the efficacy of VAAs using self-selected samples of VAA users? The panel welcomes theoretical and empirical research on these, and other related questions.

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