Models of Democracy, Participation Behaviour and Media Use: A Methodological Approach

Changing societal conditions are influencing democratic understandings and practices, giving rise to evolving democratic orientations within existing frameworks. These shifts foreground individual responsibility and relational dynamics and subtly reshape the role attributed to media and information actors. In this study, we gain a deeper understanding of how different notions of democracy are reflected among media users and their expectations of information content—particularly in today’s high-choice environments and regarding the role of online social networks. Our methodology is based on a desk research and focus groups. The study is designed to complement existing large-scale, cross-country comparative quantitative results and focuses on three countries: Germany, Austria and Poland. This is a peer-reviewed full paper accepted for the 75th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), 2025.