Tutorial: Voting Advice Applications: Design, Implementation, and Impact

Abstract

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are web-based online tools that provide a voting recommendation by matching candidates and/or parties with voters. In summary users respond to questions on a wide range of current policy issues. Their answers are then compared with the answers of candidates and/or parties in order to calculate a ranking of how closely their positions match up. VAAs allow users to compare their own political views with those of candidates and parties reflect on their own political positions and learn more about the political programs of parties and candidates. The use and effects of VAAs have attracted growing research interest in recent years. In many countries a significant and still growing proportion of the electorate use VAAs. Moreover evidence has been found that voting intentions are influenced by the recommendations provided by VAA platforms (Ladner et al. [2010a] [2012] Walgrave et al. [2008b]). The development and implementation of VAAs is gaining increased attention from technical-oriented networks. In particular communities related to recommender systems data mining social computing eGovernment among others attract researchers with contributions related to VAA developments. In this tutorial we summarize the state of the art of VAA design implementation and impact in different projects in countries including Switzerland Ecuador and Australia.