Digital Political Communication (focusing on processing)

The research in this PhD project will focus on the underlying processes that account for the effects of targeted campaign messages. Specifically, it will investigate the processing styles of citizens when confronted with targeted messages in a series of experiments. The type of targeting, the level, and accuracy of microtargeting will lead to automatic allocation of attention towards the target message, which in turn is expected to result in increased processing depth, increased arousal, more thoughts, and message recall. The project deploys eye-tracking, physiological measures (heart rate and skin conductance), thought-listing and recall, and self-reported measures of elaboration.