Electoral Politics in the Classroom: Reflections on the Sociology of Simulated Characters

Abstract

Simulations have become a staple of political science education due to their effectiveness and creative nature that contributes to learning success. In this contribution, we argue that simulations can also offer new insights not only into student engagement and active learning, but also into the sociology of political processes. In this case it is a political communication seminar, that included a simulation of presidential campaigns and an election in a fictionalized setting. This article shows that in a classroom setting the students are prone to reproduce existing electoral leanings and behavior. In the proposed simulation of elections in a fictional country of Genovia, the students naturally aligned around two candidates: a right-wing populist and an environmental activist who ultimately lost the elections. This article offers several insights into an online simulation format and breaks down the sociology of the surprisingly realistic representation of a Euro-American electorate.

Keywords:

• Political communication
• simulation
• elections
• populism

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2023.2222063)

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our anonymous reviewers and both JPSE editorial teams for their help in fleshing out the argument. We would also like to thank Tracy Poelzer and Leonie de Jonge for their pedagogical insights.

Notes

1 The students who participated in the simulation are co-authors of this article and are credited as such in this submission. They are also anonymized as characters in the simulation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizaveta Gaufman

Elizaveta Gaufman is an Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics at the University of Groningen. She is the author of Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis (Palgrave, 2017) and Everyday Foreign Policy: Performing and Consuming the Russian Nation after Crimea (Manchester University Press, 2023).

Niklas Abel

Niklas Abel is a lecturer of German at the Department of European Languages and Cultures at the University of Groningen. His teaching and research focus is on usage-based approaches to language teaching, language teaching in the multilingual classroom and the effect of implicit attention raising methods on the lexical development of a foreign language.

Esther Andela

Esther Andela is an MA student in Communication and Education at the RUG. She is writing an MA thesis at the University Medical Centre Groningen titled “Research on debriefing after simulation-based training for medical professionals”.

Carolien Adema

Carolien Adema is an MA student in Educatie Duits at the University of Groningen.

Imke Kok

Imke Kok is a student of European Languages and Cultures at the University of Groningen. Her research interest is French-Algerian women’s literature.

Marieke Schuitemaker

Marieke Schuitemaker is currently doing the Masters program EMPO (Educatieve Master Primair Onderwijs) at the VU, UvA and Universiteit Leiden. Before that she did her BA at the University of Groningen, focusing on language in education.

Meike Klok

Meike Klok has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Groningen in European Languages and Cultures (2022) with a specific focus on literatures, politics, and Swedish. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Arts and Culture at Maastricht University, specialising in Contemporary Literature and Arts, Cultural Interventions and Social Justice.

Frieso Turkstra

Frieso Turkstra is a linguistics and philosophy student at the University of Groningen. His research interests are in the field of language technology.

Johannes K. Bey

Johannes K. Bey received his bachelor’s degree in 2021 in the program European Languages and Cultures at the University of Groningen, Netherlands. He is now a second year Euroculture master student focusing on cultural subtleties between native English and German speakers in a professional environment. He is interested in political landscapes in Europe as well as analyzing the rise of populism.

Zoe Perea Oltmann

Zoe Perea Oltmann is a graduate of European Languages and Cultures Program at the University of Groningen.