My PhD dissertation explores how modern societal challenges shape political life using data-driven, causal quantitative methods.
It is titled “Challenges of the 21st Century: How politics reacts to the present”, and is structured around three standalone articles:
This study, published in the British Journal of Political Science with Toni Rodon, Asli Unan, Lisa Herbig, Heike Klüver, and Theresa Kuhn, examines how policy responses—especially the vaccine rollout—impacted political attitudes across the EU.
Abstract:
Does the EU’s performance compared to neighboring countries influence public support? Using a benchmarking approach, we argue that people compare their country’s performance within the EU to that of a non-EU country, shaping their attitudes. The COVID-19 vaccine rollout in 2020 provides an ideal test case, as governments launched vaccination programs at different speeds. The UK began weeks before EU countries, allowing us to examine its impact on EU support. Using an Unexpected Event during Surveys Design (UESD) with Eurobarometer data, we find that the UK’s early rollout significantly reduced specific policy support for the EU but did not consistently affect diffuse support. Our findings offer key insights into attitudes toward European integration and performance evaluations.
The second and third articles focus on the role of digital media in electoral politics. Using novel data from the Meta Ad Library, these papers investigate how political parties design and target their online advertising strategies across electoral districts.
They explore both descriptive patterns and causal relationships, revealing how district-level factors—like magnitude or seat margins—influence ad allocation decisions.
Abstract:
The rise of social media has transformed political communication, providing parties with powerful tools to strategically target voters across geography and demographics. However, little is known about how electoral incentives drive parties’ digital advertising decisions. This study examines how Spanish political parties adjust their digital advertising strategies based on electoral outcomes and structural features of electoral competition, focusing on elements such as district magnitude, party system fragmentation, and electoral margins. Drawing on approximately 15,000 political ads placed between 2020 and 2025, linked with electoral and demographic data across 52 districts, I analyse geographic variation in Meta-based ad targeting (Facebook and Instagram). The findings show that even in digital spaces, traditional electoral logics persist: parties advertise more in larger districts and are more likely to target areas where they narrowly won or lost the last seat. These results demonstrate that digital campaign strategies are not random or uniformly distributed-they reflect calculated decisions shaped by electoral rules and political geography. This study contributes to the growing literature on online political communication by linking platform behaviour with offline institutional incentives, and by emphasizing the continued relevance of electoral context in shaping digital strategy.
Abstract:
How sensitive are political parties to narrowly winning or losing a parliamentary seat? This paper explores whether small differences in past electoral outcomes shape parties’ digital campaign strategies in subsequent elections. Specifically, I investigate whether narrowly winning or losing the last seat in a district affects where and how parties decide to spend their online advertising resources. To estimate causal effects, the method applies a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) centered around the vote margin for the final seat. The design allows for a quasi-experimental comparison between districts where a party barely won versus barely lost a seat. The analysis sheds light on the extent to which parties strategically respond to marginal outcomes by adjusting both the intensity and substance of their digital campaigns.
My project initially focused solely on the political effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over time, I expanded the scope to address broader and more contemporary political challenges, especially the influence of digital platforms on democracy.
This shift reflects my evolving research agenda, which aims to bridge pressing real-world issues with rigorous empirical analysis.
My goal is to continue producing research that is methodologically robust and socially relevant, contributing meaningfully to both academic work and public discourse.
If you’d like to know more or collaborate, feel free to email me. I’m always happy to talk research!