Professor Matthew Wall and Dr. Louis Bromfield, both at the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and International Relations at Swansea University, discuss election forecasting. We cover different types of political forecasting, such as polls and prediction models, and dive into prediction markets like Polymarket. We then discuss the concept of the 'wisdom of the crowd' and what attributes make a good forecaster, before turning to how betting market odds, forecasting platforms, and gamification can be used in research.

Resources:
Horse Race Politics Podcast on YouTube and Spotify
Horse Race Politics Platform
Professor Wall's study on the 2007 Irish Elections
Dr. Bromfield's Doctoral Thesis

Thomas Hughes, CEO of Appeals Centre Europe, explains out-of-court dispute settlement bodies (ODS bodies) and the role they play in the Digital Services Act.

We discuss Appeals Centre Europe's first Transparency Report*, which provides an initial glimpse into how Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are handling requests from ODS bodies. We cover some top line descriptives from the Centre's first year: how many disputes were submitted, from which platform, and what types of content they were about. We also talk about 'signposting' and how the platforms are communicating their digital rights to users.

*Just a friendly heads up that the report is 25MB, so you may want to download it on WiFi!

Jakub Szymik, Founder of CEE Digital Democracy Watch, discusses the EU's ongoing initiatives to fight disinformation, regulate political advertising, and protect election integrity on social media. Jakub shares his insights on the Digital Services Act, the European Democracy Shield, and how these initiatives relate to digital political advertising on social media. We also discuss the latest Polish Presidential elections in terms of digital ad spending, Gen AI content, and political influencers.

Links:

CEE Digital Democracy Watch has just published a new report outlining how 60 stakeholder from CEE countries perceive the effectiveness of EU tech regulation and what challenges remain moving forward.

Read more about CEE Digital Democracy Watch's proposed policy actions for the European Democracy Shield, including the disinformation monitoring service mentioned in the episode.