Responsible Citizenship in a Digitalized World
Digital technologies are reshaping how people encounter, select, and understand the news. While online platforms and artificial intelligence can make information more accessible, they can also prioritize sensationalist content, reduce exposure to diverse perspectives, and make it harder to distinguish reliable journalism from misinformation. At the same time, a growing number of people are disengaging from the news altogether.
The research project “Responsible citizenship in a digitalized world – Field experiments with a news app”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), investigates how digital information environments can better support informed citizenship. Through large-scale field experiments, the project examines how people engage with news, how curated newsfeeds and AI-based information tools shape news consumption, and why people sometimes avoid news altogether. The goal is to identify ways to make reliable, diverse, and accessible journalism easier to engage with, while strengthening trust in media, political knowledge, and democratic participation.
The project brings together research on digital news consumption, artificial intelligence, misinformation, and cognitive biases. It is organised into three connected studies: curated digital newsfeeds, AI-based access to reliable news, and the causes and consequences of deliberate news avoidance.
Study A: A Digital Newsfeed for Informed Citizenship
This study examines how the design of digital news environments affects how people engage with and learn from the news. Many citizens encounter news mainly through social media or search engines, where attention-grabbing content often competes with in-depth reporting and exposure to different perspectives may be limited. This study investigates whether a curated newsfeed that brings together reporting from a broad range of reliable German media outlets can make relevant, high-quality journalism easier to access in everyday life.
A particular focus is on how artificial intelligenge can be used to present news in accessible formats without oversimplifying complex issues. The researchers will examine whether concise AI-generated written and audio summaries improve understanding and recall of important news. They will also study whether regular exposure to a diverse selection of journalism affects trust in media, political knowledge, openness to differing viewpoints, and support for independent journalism.
Team: Maja Adena, Sabrina Jeworrek, Marita Freimane, Fidel Petros, Felipe Lauritzen, Katharina Dorn
Study B: AI-Based Access to Reliable News
Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly important gateway to information. People increasingly use AI tools to search for news, understand current events, and obtain concise summaries of complex issues.At the same time, AI-based access to news raises concerns about inaccurate information, unclear sourcing, and a potential weakening of the connection between readers and professional journalism.
This studyinvestigates whether an AI-based news service drawing on a broad range of reliable journalistic sources can support more informed news consumption. It examines whether such a tool can help users distinguish reliable from unreliable information, improve their knowledge of current events, and encourage more active engagement with news. The study also examines whether people are more willing to seek out and pay for reliable journalismn when it is accessible in a convenient, conversational format.
More broadly, the study asks how AI can support, rather than replace, the role of independent journalism in democratic societies.
Team: Maja Adena, Marita Freimane, Fidel Petros, Felipe Lauritzen
Subproject C: Why People Avoid the News
A growing number of people deliberately avoid the news. They may find it stressful, overwhelming, repetitive, or emotionally difficult—especially when it concerns wars, humanitarian crises, or highly polarized political debates. Yet avoiding information can have consequences: citizens may be less able to assess political developments, form informed opinions, or understand the perspectives of people affected by major events.
This subproject examines why people choose not to engage with certain kinds of news and whether this avoidance differs depending on whom the news is about. It focuses in particular on conflicts and public debates in which people may feel closer to one side than to another. The researchers will explore whether people are more likely to avoid information that concerns groups they perceive as distant from themselves, and how such patterns shape knowledge, attitudes towards foreign policy, and willingness to support humanitarian assistance.
The project will also investigate whether better access to balanced, reliable reporting can reduce such biases and help people engage with difficult information in a more informed and reflective way.
Team: Maja Adena, Zoe Rahwan, Arnav Arora, Katharina Dorn, (Ralph Hertig)
Project Team
Maja Adena — Professor & Project Lead, WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Technical University Berlin is a behavioral economist specializing in media economics and causal research methods, including survey, field, and natural experiments. Her recent research examines news demand, learning from news, and how media coverage shapes individual behavior. Her research has been published in leading journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and Management Science.
Sabrina Jeworrek — Professor & Project Lead, OVGU Magdeburg and IWH Halle is a behavioral economist with extensive methodological expertise in designing and conducting field experiments. Her research uses experiments to study economic behavior in real-world settings, with a particular emphasis on observed behavior rather than self-reported outcomes. Her research has been published in leading journals, including the Economic Journal and Management Science.
Marita Freimane — Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Zurich is an applied microeconomist studying digital media markets. Her research examines how regulation affects news markets, with a particular focus on media financing and the relationship between publishers and technology companies, including work on regulations mandating payments to news publishers, such as Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code and Canada’s Online News Act.
Felipe Lauritzen — Postdoctoral Researcher, WZB Berlin Social Science Center is an economist studying media, democracy, and political information. His research includes experimental projects on misinformation, media concentration, and news selection in Brazil and India. He also coordinates the CEPR Media Plurality Research & Policy Network, which brings together researchers and policymakers working on media markets and the future of journalism
DFG Research Grants
The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) is the central self-governing organization for science and research in Germany, funding research projects in all disciplines at universities and research institutions. Through its Research Grants Programme, the DFG supports thematically and temporally limited projects selected in a competitive peer-review process based solely on scientific quality and originality.
Link To DFG project description: here.