doi.org
Bridging the Gap? Liveübertragungen in Kreistagen und Stadträten als Datengrundlage für die politikwissenschaftliche Forschung - Politische Vierteljahresschrift
The scarcity of meeting minutes makes it difficult to analyze the working methods of local political bodies and the behavior of the actors involved. The increasing availability of livestreams and video recordings of district and city council meetings is helping to remedy this situation. Combined with technical innovations for extracting and processing large (multimodal) datasets, this availability enables new perspectives for local political research. However, for this wealth of data to be widely used, it must be generalizable to the broader population of local government bodies. Accordingly, questions arise regarding whether districts and cities that offer livestreams and recordings differ systematically from those that do not and whether these broadcasts induce shifts in local political debates.To this end, based on systematic research and a survey of district council members, this study describes the legal, political, and financial framework for introducing such recordings and examines the resulting influence on speakers’ behavior. Meeting recordings are available, particularly in large cities, but have so far been scarce in districts with low population density; furthermore, significant differences exist among the federal states. The survey indicates that adjustments to expanded public visibility of meetings are also occurring at the local level. Thus, the external validity of meeting recordings as a data source is not yet established, which should be taken into account during research design and case selection.
