Young and Politicised: An Evaluation of VAAs’ Impact on Young University Students

Since the early 2000’s, the study of Voting Advice Applications (VAA) has been rocketing. VAAs are widely used and are very popular. Multiple studies (Aarts & van der Kolk, 2007; Enyedi, 2016; Fivaz & Nadig, 2010; Garry et. al., 2018; Laaksonen et al., 2016; Ladner et al., 2012; Mahéo, 2017; Marschall, 2005; Mykkänen & Moring, 2006) have shown that the use of a VAA could have have an impact on the intention to cast a ballot, the vote choice, the propensity to seek for further information and on discussions about politics. Moreover, the widespread use of VAAs seem to particularly impact voters that appear to be more difficult to mobilise in elections - youth, those with lower educational levels, women, etc. The present paper aims at assessing the impact of the use of a VAA on democratic attitudes during the Federal election of 2019 in the three Regions of Belgium. Using an experimental research design similar to the one of Valérie-Anne Mahéo (2017), our article proposes to test the impact of using a VAA on different dimensions such as the vote choice, political knowledge, and the propensity to seek for further information in the short (during the campaign) and the long run (few days after the election). Furthermore, the paper will look at a specific part of the population, young educated citizens. By controlling for their level of political interest, our goal is to disentangle the unclear link between being young (and therefore more prone to be impacted by the use of a VAA) and being interested in politics (which may attenuate the impact of a VAA). We rely on samples of undergraduate university students from different socio-demographic backgrounds. Additionally, these students hail from three different campuses in Belgium (Antwerp, Brussels and Louvain-la-Neuve) located in at least two different political systems (Flanders and Wallonia). This exploratory research lays the foundation for further and larger-scale work on VAAs impact on the general Belgian population.