The Experimental Social Media Platform (ESMP), SDU Social, is a digital research infrastructure developed at the Digital Democracy Centre to study the social, behavioural, and democratic effects of social media environments. The platform replicates a realistic social media experience and allows researchers to systematically vary elements such as feed composition, interface design, and algorithmic logic while observing user behaviour over time.
The ESMP bridges the gap between experimental control and ecological validity, enabling independent, high-quality research on how digital platforms shape news consumption, attention, and information equality. It supports interdisciplinary studies across political science, communication, computer science, and psychology, and integrates survey data, behavioural tracking, and modular components for tailored experimental setups.
By consolidating and scaling this infrastructure, the project aims to make advanced experimental research on digital media effects accessible to a wider research community, contributing to transparency, reproducibility, and methodological innovation in the study of online information environments.
Members: Rasmus W. Schmøkel, Claes De Vreese, Narongrit Umwerawattana
The ESMP bridges the gap between experimental control and ecological validity, enabling independent, high-quality research on how digital platforms shape news consumption, attention, and information equality. It supports interdisciplinary studies across political science, communication, computer science, and psychology, and integrates survey data, behavioural tracking, and modular components for tailored experimental setups.
By consolidating and scaling this infrastructure, the project aims to make advanced experimental research on digital media effects accessible to a wider research community, contributing to transparency, reproducibility, and methodological innovation in the study of online information environments.
Members: Rasmus W. Schmøkel, Claes De Vreese, Narongrit Umwerawattana