From Data to Impact: MEDem Conference 2025 - Monitoring Electoral Democracy From Data to Impact: MEDEM CONFERENCE 2025 The 3rd MEDem Conference took place at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Cologne. Over the course of two days, researchers, policymakers, ...

✨ From Data to Impact: The #MEDemConference recap is now online!

Two days of exchange, reflection, and collaboration with inspiring voices from media, policy, and academia, innovative tools, & plenty of photo highlights showing the #MEDemCommunity in action 📸

👉 Read the full #MEDemBlog post here:

A group of MEDem team members standing outside in Cologne, gathered around a bright orange statue of the Mouse from the German children’s TV show Die Sendung mit der Maus.

A group photo of MEDem team members in front of a screen displaying the MEDem (Monitoring Electoral Democracy) logo.

✨ Two inspiring days at the #MEDemConference wrapped up with our #MEDemBoD meeting!

A big thank you to @gesis.org for hosting us in Cologne — and for the chance to meet one of the city’s most famous residents: Die Maus, star of the legendary German TV show "Die Sendung mit der Maus". 🐭🎉

Sofia Gil-Clavel stands at a podium presenting AmCAT at the 3rd MEDem Conference. Behind her, a slide shows the AmCAT team (Kasper Welbers, Wouter van Atteveldt, Johannes Gruber, Sofia Gil-Clavel) with the tagline: “Developed by researchers for researchers, society, and data savvy users.” Logos of MEDem, VU Amsterdam, and the Societal Analytics Lab are displayed at the top.

Sebastian Ziaja stands at a podium presenting HarDIS (Harmony in the Democratic Ideological Space) at the 3rd MEDem Conference. A slide behind him shows the HarDIS team (Lea Kaftan, Paul Bederke, Selçuk Timur Uluer) with the logos of MEDem, GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, and OSCARS (the funding initiative).

Day 2 of the #MEDemConference at @gesis.org starts with powerful tool demos:
🔍 AmCAT @sof14g1l.bsky.social on enabling large-scale text analysis of media & political debates.
🌐 HarDIS @sziaja.bsky.social on harmonizing and sustaining cross-national democracy data (surveys, parties, experts).

#CNES took the floor at the 3rd #MEDemConference at @gesis.org as Olga Gyarfasova presented our activities to the #DemocracyResearch community 💡 #CNES is a proud partner of @medem.bsky.social and we look forward to a continued collaboration with this emerging European #ResearchInfrastructure 🚀

Lorenzo De Sio presents at the 3rd MEDem Conference 2025, standing beside a projection of the MEDem Service Gateway Hub. The slide shows tools including MEDem ATLAS, METEOR, AmCAT, and HarDIS, which support comparative democracy research.

Next at the #MEDemConference – @LorenzoDeSio presents his vision for the #MEDemServiceGatewayHub 🌐 – featuring #ATLAS, our living encyclopedia designed to make democracy data findable, comparable, reusable, and linkable. Discover more about our #MEDemTools 👉 link in bio!

I really enjoyed the inspiring keynote speeches by @sldelange.bsky.social and @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social at the 3rd #MEDemConference at @gesis.org in Cologne! ⭐

Sarah de Lange presents at the 3rd MEDem Conference 2025. Behind her, a slide shows the book “The Normalization of the Radical Right” and a quote on how radical-right behavior grows when previously hidden views become socially acceptable.

Simon Munzert speaks at the 3rd MEDem Conference 2025 on the past, present, and future of democracy research.

🚀 Kicking off day 1 of the 3rd #MEDemConference at @gesis.org! From @sldelange.bsky.social discussing radical-right normalization 🗳️ to calls to consolidate democracy data by @simonsaysnothin.bsky.social 📊 — keynotes spotlight why #MEDem matters for democracy.

Open science in democracy research: the research infrastructure “Monitoring Electoral Democracy” (MEDem) - European Political Science Ensuring universal access to scientific research and upholding the principles of keeping data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable is of paramount importance to the democratization of science. However, upholding these principles becomes increasingly complex with the increasing scope of data collection, the more different types of data we collect (e.g., survey, text, or institutional and country-level macro data), and the more research teams are involved in data collection. In the domain of democracy research, scientists across Europe are therefore joining forces to launch the research infrastructure monitoring electoral democracy (MEDem), which aims to establish itself as an open platform where the fragmented crowd of researchers in the various research fields can coordinate and develop common standards for data collection both retrospectively as well as prospectively to make their data interoperable, and (comparative) democracy research more productive. Moreover, MEDem will help make democracy research data and findings accessible to the general public (e.g., citizens, journalists, and policymakers).

Find the full open access piece here: doi.org/10.1057/s413...
Authored by @hajoboo.bsky.social, @alexiakatsanidou.bsky.social, S. Kritzinger, G. Lutz, J. Willmann & @jamoeberl.bsky.social – just in time for the upcoming #MEDemConference.

Gestern & heute fand die #MEDemConference in Wien statt, deren Ziel es war, die Community der quantitativen #Demokratieforschung über die geplante #EuropeanInfrastructure zu informieren. Dank eines äußert professionellen Teams, war die Konferenz ein voller Erfolg.