As usual, this year's V-Dem update includes an annual update to the original DSP expert survey.

Two map graphs show the state of liberal democracy according to the V-Dem Liberal Democracy index for 2025 and 2024. The higher the score (or darker blue), the more democratic the country. Lower scores (or dark red) mean less democratic. While North and South America, Western Europe and Oceania are mostly in the blue, most parts of Asia and Africa are in the red in 2025. In comparison to the map for 2024, the map graph for 2025 shows democratic backsliding in some traditionally stable democracies in Western Europe and North America, in particular the USA, United Kingdom and Italy.

📢 Out Now! V-Dem Dataset v16 & the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026
💾 The V-Dem Dataset: v-dem.net/data/the-v-d...
📰 The Report "Unraveling The Democratic Era?”: v-dem.net/publications...
📈 Explore the new data with the V-Dem Graphing tools: v-dem.net/graphing/gra...

#PoliSky #PoliSciSky
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Picture of ocean shore with the text "Registration open for Demscore Confrence 2026. Gothenburg, Sweden, 8-9 June, 2026."

👉 Registation Open for DEMSCORE Conference 2026
Join us in Gothenburg for the 4th DEMSCORE Conference!

Registration is now open on the DEMSCORE website: www.demscore.se/events/demsc...

📅 Registration deadline is May 22

#Polisky #PolDataSky #SocialScienceData #CompSocialScience #PoliSciSky

Flag of University of Gothenburg, hanging from the wall of the Department of Political Science building. Added text: We're Hiring! Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Cross-National Survey Methodology in Political Science. Combined position at V-Dem Institute and Governance and Local Development Institute.

📢 We are hiring: Combined Postdoc position at V-Dem Institute and GLD!
Applications are open for a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Cross-National Survey Methodology in Political Science.

Application: web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103...

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#Polisky #PoliSciSky #PoliticalScienceJobs #PostDoc

Front pages of V-Dem Institute Democracy Reports stacked on top of each other, with the top one showing the text "Democracy Report 2026: Out March 17" on the front page.

📢 V-Dem dataset version 16, updated with data for 2025, and the V-Dem Institute Democracy Report 2026 will be released on March 17!
Make sure to follow us so you don't miss the announcement.

@vdemamlat.bsky.social
#Polisky #PoliSciSky #PoliticalScience #PoliticalScienceData #AcademicSky #VDemData

💡 How does V-Dem assess the levels of democracy in a country?
Watch the video or read the thread below to find out!
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#VDemMethodology #VDemData #Polisky #PolDataSky #SocialScienceData #PoliSciSky

@vdemamlat.bsky.social @digitalsocietyproject.org

#DemscoreConference Data Workshop
💾 How to collect, process and generate data for research projects?
Join Demscore partners for a discussion on research data collection, transforming raw data into datasets, & the main challenges during data collection & dataset generation.

#Polisky
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Finally, we also collaborated with other scholars to collect, and make public, candidate-level data on social media presence, and candidate characteristics, for recent elections for twelve countries around the world (this work was funded by Twitter, in the before-times). 5/5

With the support of NSF we're expanding this work to a new expert pool, and a new set of questions. We have conducted one round of data collection and are gearing up for our first update. We expect to publicly release data in the next few months. 2/5

Title and abstract for "Measuring online political activity: introducing the digital society project." ABSTRACT Political engagement is deeply enmeshed with online activity. However, there has been a lack of publicly available cross-country datasets enabling researchers and policymakers to understand how politics and digital space intersect. This paper introduces the Digital Society Project (DSP), which aims to provide systematic, cross-country measurement of political institutions and behavior that manifest online or are affected by online activity. Using the Varieties of Democracy Project infrastructure, DSP provides annual global data from 2000 to 2021. The dataset features 35 indicators measuring online censorship, politicization of social media, coordinated information operations, foreign influence, monitoring of domestic politics, and regime cyber capacity...

We have a recent paper in the Journal of Information Technology and Politics that introduces these data and does some validation. doi.org/10.1080/1933... 3/5

First, in partnership with @vdeminstitute.bsky.social we field an annual expert survey about online censorship, polarization and politicization of social media, disinformation campaigns, coordinated information operations, and foreign influence in and monitoring of domestic politics. 2/5

Reintroducing ourselves now that bsky is a thing: DSP aims to help answer questions surrounding interactions between the internet and politics by providing high-quality, publicly available, cross-national data describing the intersection between politics and social media. 1/5

In 2022 & 2023 DSP collaborated with various scholars to collect data about candidates for national legislative (and sometimes subnational) elections in Australia, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Nepal, Philippines, Tunisia, and the USA. #polisky 1/4

Thanks to @alucardi1.bsky.social @snurb.bsky.social @wdaniel127.bsky.social
@msaeltzer.bsky.social @gillesverniers.bsky.social @profdansmith.bsky.social @dotanhaim.bsky.social @a2hicken.bsky.social and all the other folks who worked with us on this project!

You can find datasets, with codebooks, here: digitalsocietyproject.org/candidate-da... 3/4

Data include social media handles (mostly Twitter, but sometimes other), which are now quite stale, but also career, party membership, and demographic data that may be of use to scholars of elections, political parties, and political careers. 2/4

In 2022 & 2023 DSP collaborated with various scholars to collect data about candidates for national legislative (and sometimes subnational) elections in Australia, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Nepal, Philippines, Tunisia, and the USA. #polisky 1/4

Title and abstract for "Measuring online political activity: introducing the digital society project." ABSTRACT Political engagement is deeply enmeshed with online activity. However, there has been a lack of publicly available cross-country datasets enabling researchers and policymakers to understand how politics and digital space intersect. This paper introduces the Digital Society Project (DSP), which aims to provide systematic, cross-country measurement of political institutions and behavior that manifest online or are affected by online activity. Using the Varieties of Democracy Project infrastructure, DSP provides annual global data from 2000 to 2021. The dataset features 35 indicators measuring online censorship, politicization of social media, coordinated information operations, foreign influence, monitoring of domestic politics, and regime cyber capacity...

We have a new paper out in the Journal of Information Technology and Politics. It "introduces" (we're now on v5) the DSP dataset. This is expert survey data collected as part of the annual V-Dem survey. The paper provides an overview and does some validation. doi.org/10.1080/1933...