The World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) invites paper, panel and poster submissions for the WAPOR 76th Annual Conference that will take place on September 19-22, 2023 in Salzburg, Austria at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg. Proposals adressing both methodological aspects and substantive topics in public opinion research are equally welcome.
The call for papers details and the description of the conference theme are summarized below. If relevant, pease, take a moment to distribute this call among the members of your association, research committee or project.
More information on the WAPOR 2023 abstracts submission guidelines is available at the WAPOR website. All submissions must be in English, and all accepted works are to be presented in English. Submissions deadline is Sunday, April 23. In order to submit an abstract, you will need to log into your WAPOR online account. If you do not have one, you will need to create it first at http://members.wapor.org/. WAPOR membership is not required to submit an abstract.
Conference Theme: Public Opinion Research in a Technology-Driven World
Although the availability of internet access remains far from adequate in many low-income countries around the world, internet technologies have transformed the practice of politics and commerce in the societies in which they are used, with consumers, candidates, parties and politicians interacting online. Affordances (such as sharing, liking, commenting, and a range of emotions) provided by social media platforms provide massive amounts of data for research on public engagement with information online. Misinformation -- false information and fake news especially in the context of disasters, crises and elections -- remain a problem online and off in many countries. The internet is just one example of a technology driving commerce and social change. Next to sea level rise and climate change mitigation, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing present the greatest challenges to global governance.
Given the challenges and opportunities for society presented by rapidly accelerating technologies, what does the latest public opinion research tell us about the issues of importance today? What can we learn from public opinion and elite opinion over time? What are the latest developments in public opinion research, misinformation, and the study of campaigning and voting behavior? What threats do non-probability samples and AI pose to public opinion research and election forecasting? What are the challenges and opportunities in big data analytics -- topic modeling, sentiment scoring, image analysis?
The 2023 conference theme is broad. It includes many newer topics relevant to public opinion research including e-voting, e-deliberation, e-panels, mixed mode studies, AI, social media research and methods, technologies and the UN›s sustainable development goals, as well as longstanding ‹classical› public opinion research topics of importance such as electoral studies, freedom to publish polls, the quality of public opinion research around the world, traditional media research, and more.
The upcoming conference presentations, posters, and panels will include topics such as:
- Public opinion and public diplomacy
- Public opinion, policymaking and survey research
- Public opinion, elections and voting
- Political behavior, participation and culture in survey research
- New sources of information on public opinion and the use of social media
- Public opinion and misinformation
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenges in public opinion research and survey methods
- Public opinion and virtual reality
- News, media, journalism and public opinion
- Advertising Online, Media and Audience Research
- Digitalization and new sources of information in survey research
- Survey research applications
- E-voting, e-deliberation, e-panels
- Comparative research and International Survey Projects
- Cross-cultural concerns in data collection and measurement issues
- Big data, sentiment analysis and machine learning
- Data visualization, new technologies and online surveys
- Best practices for stakeholder research and expert surveys
- Panel, longitudinal and national monitoring surveys in policymaking
- Methodological challenges and improvements in the areas of sampling, measurement, survey design and survey response or non-response
- Qualitative research
Conference paper awards:
WAPOR awards and prizes are intended to recognize significant accomplishments in the Public Opinion field. Specifically, we encourage future advancements through student awards and yearly accomplishments for exemplary papers and presentations at the annual conference, including:
- Naomi Turner Prize that honors the best paper written and presented at the annual conference by a student(s).
- Elizabeth Nelson Prize that is presented to the best paper written and presented at the annual conference by one or more persons from a society in transition (tiers B, C or D).
- Alexis de Tocqueville Award that is given annually for the best conference paper concerned with democracy and public opinion, whether in a consolidated or in an emerging democracy.
- Janet A. Harkness Student Paper Award that is a joint award of WAPOR and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).
- Helen Dinerman Award that honors particularly significant contributions to survey research methodology.
- Robert M. Worcester Prize that is given for the previous year‹s outstanding paper contributed to the International Journal of Public Opinion Research.
You can find out more about these prizes HERE. If required, full papers must be submitted electronically to waporoffice(at)gmail.com by the deadline of July 31, 2023 (by 11:59 pm ET).