Research

MDI faculty lead multiple community-based research networks. For example, The Vote 16 Research Network studies what happens when communities lower the voting age to 16 

MDI Team Members:  Paul Brown | Michael Hanmer | Sam Novey | Lena Morreale Scott

MDI’s newest research project will dramatically accelerate the creation of the first-in-nation research hub focused on registering, educating, and mobilizing high school students. By building on research that shows voting is habit forming, that high schools are some of the most effective and equitable spaces to reach future voters, and that disruptions after high school create barriers to registration and voting, this research project will convene stakeholders and local partners and will take a systematic approach to studying and engaging new voters. This MDI project is made possible by a gift from Marsha and Henry Laufer. 

MDI Team members:  Michael Hanmer | Sam Novey | Lena Morreale Scott  

Building on earlier UMD-led research about collaborations between local election officials and sports teams, MDI faculty are currently exploring research about how professional athletes can encourage their fans to register and vote. 

MDI Team members:  Michael Hanmer | Sam Novey

In collaboration with The Washington Post, MDI faculty study attitudes about democracy, performance of elected officials, climate change, racial and social justice, and public health, as well as behaviors such as voting and safety measures taken during the pandemic.

MDI Team member:  Michael Hanmer

MDI faculty, graduate students, and their colleagues in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism are researching ways to halt the growing demise of local news, which is essential to strengthening democracy. The college has launched the Local News Ecosystem project in Maryland with the goal of expanding the study nationwide. The groundbreaking study identifies local news outlets in Maryland, gathering detailed information on staffing, budget, needs, and more through a survey and content analysis. The results and methodology of what is planned to be a bi-annual study will be released at an MDI and Merrill College event in April 2024, gathering local, new providers and university researchers from around the country. 

MDI Team Members: Tom Rosenstiel | Sarah Oates | Rafael Lorente

MDI faculty experts and doctoral students in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism research the intersection of media, democracy, and politics in countries including the United States, Russia, and India. MDI faculty use both traditional content analysis and computational methods to detect propaganda narratives in the media. Current research focuses both on detecting and deterring Russian propaganda in U.S. elections, as well as deploying novel methodologies to track disinformation that targets the ethnic minority press in the United States. 

MDI Team Members: Sarah Oates

A significant project launching in 2024 at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism will analyze and develop AI tools to enhance journalism. This builds on work funded by the National Science Foundation in the college on developing AI tools to improve fact-checking and disinformation detection in news at the college’s Computational Journalism Lab. 

MDI Faculty: Rafael Lorente

MDI faculty and graduate students are researching how Maryland’s local education agencies (school districts and special schools) vary in the ways they implement the state graduation requirement that all high school students complete 75 hours of service-learning, a “proven practice” that strengthens students’ knowledge, skills, and civic experiences.  

MDI Team Members: Julie Miller | Lena Morreale Scott

MDI faculty and graduate students are leading the Digital Civic Inquiry Project, which is a collaboration with the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education and the Close Up Foundation and will support eighth-grade teachers in adopting an innovative curricular approach, digital civic inquiry. Through digital civic inquiries, students engage in scaffolded research about civic issues like access to affordable housing or minimum wage increases. Students learn to locate and evaluate a range of digital sources, use credible sources to inform their developing opinions, discuss what they learn about the issue and potential policy solutions, and plan to take action to advocate for their preferred solutions.

This project is supported by an American History and Civics National Activities Grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

MDI Team Members: Sarah McGrew | Elizabeth Reynolds | Lena Morreale Scott

Deep and growing political polarizations threaten to thwart understanding of how science and civics education can promote a common good. MDI team members are addressing how people develop socially and learn about the climate crisis and sustainability and how to reason scientifically, civically, and critically when encountering conflicting sources and claims related to sustainable development. Click here to learn more about the research aspect of this project.

In addition to MDI funding, this project is supported--in part--by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-2201012. 

MDI Team Members: Doug Lombardi | Sarah McGrew

Many elementary-aged students spend substantial time on digital devices both in and out of school. Yet, educational efforts to confront mis- and disinformation have yet to focus on this age group. MDI faculty and graduate students are developing materials, teacher trainings, and evaluation measures to test pedagogical approaches that align with early social and cognitive development to support students’ early capacity to detect misinformation. 

MDI Team Members: Jenna Alton | Luke Butler | Sarah McGrew | Doug Lombardi | Elizabeth Reynolds

MDI co-leads the Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA), a repository of detailed election results focusing on the constituency level for lower-chamber and upper-chamber legislative elections from around the world. This work preserves and consolidates valuable data in a comprehensive, reliable resource that is ready for analysis and publicly available at no cost. This public good is useful to a range of audiences for research, policy, practice, and education. Products by a broader community that rely on these data are captured in a bibliography. This data provides a natural history of a major segment of national elections.

MDI Team Member: David Backer