Abstract
Recent evidence shows that European citizens often display inaccurate perceptions of the social and political facts around them. On many key issues, they perceive a reality that is distant from factual accounts. For instance, non-EU immigrants comprise 4.2% of the population resident in the EU. However, according to a 2018 Eurobarometer survey, citizens believe the percentage is about 4 times higher. This chasm between perceptions and reality has relevant consequences in terms of how citizens think about salient political issues, how they evaluate political leaders and their proposals, how they assess policy priorities and their propensity to engage in different forms of political participation (i.e. electoral and unconventional). In short, misperceptions play a relevant and potentially distortive role throughout the whole political process. Elites (both politicians and media professionals) play an unquestionable role in shaping the lens through which citizens assess political facts, although their role is not always explicitly investigated in social and political research. MiMeSys centres on information disorder and ideological and affective polarisation as crucial sources of misperceptions among citizens and targets the effects of these misperceptions on relevant political attitudes and behaviours. It does so by studying perceptions on a set of critical issues that are, and will likely remain, paramount challenges both in Italy and Europe, including migration, health, climate change, inequalities. The project aims to achieve these goals through a cutting-edge and multi-method research design based on a panel survey including experiments, an elite survey addressed to journalists and politicians, social and traditional media analysis. Thus, MiMeSys will significantly advance scientific knowledge on the causes and the political implications of misperceptions generating high-quality results that will benefit not only the academic community but also media professionals, and the public-at-large. The project will impact and strengthen research in this domain in three main ways. First, it will complement current concerns for citizens’ awareness of the functioning of institutions and their political knowledge by investigating the accuracy of beliefs on issues that may shape political attitudes and participation. Second, it will establish a multi-actor perspective on the issue of misperceptions by considering not only lay citizens but also media and political elites, and allowing for a comparison between these levels. Third, it will expand the focus beyond the current US-centred approach as it will address poorly investigated contexts such as Italy. Additionally, the project will function as a knowledge hub, spreading reliable information on main sources of misperceptions and contributing to educate citizens, especially young adults, to critically approach information. MiMeSys Project results: MiMeSys investigated the causes and consequences of political misperceptions in the hybrid media system, focusing on the role of information disorder and ideological and affective polarisation. Using a multi-method design combining a three-wave panel survey with embedded experiments, surveys of political and media elites, and analyses of traditional and social media, the project examined salient issues including immigration, climate change, GMOs, military spending, unemployment, wages and the Citizens’ Basic Income. The project fully achieved its objectives and produced original datasets on citizens, politicians, journalists, newspapers, social media and fact-checking content. Its findings show that misperceptions are not limited to the general public but also affect political and media elites. Among citizens, the effects of corrective information, source and format vary according to prior partisan alignment. The project also developed innovative methodological tools combining computational social science and Large Language Models, including a framework for analysing the strategic use of “fake news” accusations in political conflict. The results were disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, open-access reports, conferences, seminars and public-engagement materials such as infographics, podcasts, visualisations and quizzes. Overall, MiMeSys advanced the study of misperceptions in Italy and strengthened interdisciplinary cooperation among the four participating universities. Results of the University of Bologna operational unit The University of Bologna unit led the research on misperceptions among political and journalistic elites. It first contributed to the design of the common project questionnaire, covering media diets, trust in information sources, attitudes towards disinformation, political orientations, polarisation and factual beliefs. It then adapted the survey to the professional characteristics of journalists and politicians, adding questions on employment conditions, party affiliation and level of elective office. The survey was then conducted in March 2025 and substantially exceeded the original target of 500 respondents. It collected 650 completed interviews with journalists and 416 with politicians, including local, regional and national representatives. The results show that high levels of political engagement, professional expertise and access to information do not protect elites from misperceptions. Politicians display broad media diets and strong trust in traditional outlets, but greater scepticism towards digital sources and a tendency to attribute responsibility for disinformation mainly to social media users. Both politicians and journalists show selective vulnerabilities on highly politicised issues. Their factual beliefs often vary systematically with political orientation and ideological proximity to the source of a claim, consistently with mechanisms of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. These findings provide original evidence that elite beliefs, like those of ordinary citizens, may follow predictable partisan patterns across issues relating to economic policy, scientific evidence, government performance and political leadership. This has important implications for agenda-setting, public debate and democratic accountability. The Bologna unit disseminated its findings through two open-access research reports, published on the project website and Zenodo, respectively devoted to Italian journalists and politicians. The results were also presented at the 2025 conference of the Italian Political Science Association and developed into academic articles currently submitted to peer-reviewed international journals or in preparation.
Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Filippo Tronconi
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali
Coordinatore:
Università degli Studi di MILANO(Italy)
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 44.872,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
15/10/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
