Five faculty-led research projects from across the University of Michigan have received Presidential Awards for Understanding Democracy to enhance understanding of democracy’s operation and promise. Faculty affiliated with the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research took four of the awards, which are part of the universitywide Year of Democracy, Civic Empowerment, and Global Engagement.
The CPS awardees included faculty affiliates Cesi Cruz, Ariel Hasell, Kenneth Lowande, Mara Ostfeld, and Sabina Tomkins, as well as CPS Fellow Ignangeli Salinas-Muniz, an ISR Next Generation scholar.
“These Presidential Award recipients highlight the richness of U-M’s expertise on democracy, drawing from a wide range of disciplines and uplifting transformative research,” said Jenna Bednar, co-chair of the Year of Democracy, professor of political science in LSA, and professor of public policy in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, as cited in Ford’s announcement.
The awards are part of the Year of Democracy’s allocation of over $525,000 in funding to research, events and teaching opportunities across the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses. The initiative was launched in June 2024.
The awarded projects led by CPS faculty are:
Observatory of Attitudes Toward Public-Serving Institutions (OATLI)
- Sabina Tomkins, assistant professor of information, School of Information; and Ariel Hasell, assistant professor of communication and media, LSA.
- Their project will develop an open-source computational social science infrastructure for observing and understanding attitudes toward public-serving institutions and democratic systems on social media.
- Tomkins and Hasell, both affiliates of CPS, combine their expertise on computational methods, digital media, and public opinion.
Learning about Executive Power in a Democracy
- Kenneth Lowande, associate professor of political science, LSA, and associate professor of public policy, Ford School.
- A first-of-its-kind pilot study of public consumption of news about executive action in the United States.
- Lowande is an affiliate of CPS and a leading expert on executive power.
Understanding Democracy in the Age of Misinformation: A Social Network Approach
- Cesi Cruz, associate professor of political science, LSA.
- This case study of the Philippines integrates social network analysis, qualitative inquiry and lab-in-the-field experiments to examine how misinformation circulates within social networks, why individuals engage with false narratives and how interventions can be designed to promote critical engagement with information.
- Cruz is a CPS affiliate whose research on political science and economics yields insights on elections, misinformation, gender and inclusive development.
“Imagining Freedom”: The Relationship Between Institutional Narratives, Political Imagination and Democratic Aspirations in U.S. Territories
- Mara Ostfeld, research associate professor of public policy, Ford School; with Ignangeli Salinas-Muniz, Ph.D. candidate, political science.
- An examination of the role that institutional narratives play in perceived capacity for self-governance and democratic reform.
The final award went to a project on Democracy and Design, exploring how the design of public spaces, from public squares to hybrid forums to experimental platforms, either invites participation or enforces exclusion. That team includes Anyya Sirota and Sharon Haar of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and Ishan Pal Singh of Taubman College, director of the Taubman Visualization Lab.
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