The aim of the project
DataPopEU is a research project that aims to develop novel methods and techniques to collect, process (clean) and analyze internet and big volume data to systematically investigate the significant political patterns of populism and euroscepticism in the Greek context.
Populism and euroscepticism became major issues in many countries especially after the financial recession of 2008 as the electoral power of many populist and eurosceptic parties has increased. The case is even stronger for Greece because the country has experienced a severe public debt crisis which affected the political system triggering a crisis of democracy and representation.
Data sources
Data used by the research project is generated by four different sources:
•printed press,
• web questionnaires,
• social media and
• the Compass for populism and euroscepticism (PopEUCompass) based on Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) and developed during the project.
Objectives
• produce high quality data by developing and applying response quality indicators and data cleaning methods
• develop and apply innovative methods to collect, analyze and interpret social media data referring to populist and euroscepticist issues as they are expressed by Greek political parties, politicians and voters
• maximize the quality of information contained in our data by combining our datasets
• develop a compass for populism and euroscepticism (PopEUCompass) based on the main structure of Helpmevote (a Voting Advice Application) which will help citizens find their proximity to populist and eurosceptic political parties
• develop revised questionnaires for the Greek Candidate Study, Hellenic Voter Study and PopEUCompass by using the concentrated information about populist and eurosceptic issues
• use the collected data to measure populism and euroscepticism in Greece and investigate their relationship
• conduct a comparative analysis using data gathered in the two different elections (2015 and 2019).