I am a postdoctoral researcher within the TWON (Twins of Online Networks) EU Horizon project of Dr. Damian Trilling and member of the EU COST OPINION network. Together we investigate the influence of algorithmic design on democratic debate quality of online platforms. I have a broad and interdisciplinary research interest combining (political) communication science with psychology and computational methods. Before rejoining the Political Communication (PolCom) group at the Amsterdam School of Political Communication (ASCoR), I worked as a methodologist at the Dutch public broadcaster (NPO), worked as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, and a postdoc on the NWO VIDI High-Risk Politics project of Prof. Barbara Vis at that same university studying how heuristic biases influence decisions by politicians. My PhD was on the effect of media coverage of opinion polls on political behavior (supervised by Dr. Andreas Schuck and Prof.dr. Claes de Vreese, completed at UvA, 2017).

Reseach interests

• Online debate quality
• Heuristics and biases
• Opinions
• Emotions
• Computational methods

Current research

I design and study the online debate quality metrics for the EU-wide TWON consortium headed by Dr. Damian Trilling, which builds a replica of a social media platform to find out how to improve online communication through algorithmic design.

Peer reviewed publications

Vis, B., & Stolwijk, S.B. (2022). In ‘a league of their own?’ Judgement and decision-making by politicians and non-politicians. In A. Weinberg (ed) Psychology of Democracy: Of the People, By the People, For the People. (pp. 124-145). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108774871.

Stolwijk, S. B., & Schuck, A. R. (2021). All in the game: Effects of opinion polls on party coverage in the 2013 German election campaign. Journalism, 22(9), 2297-2312.

Stolwijk, S. B., & Vis, B. (2021). Politicians, the representativeness heuristic and decision-making biases. Political Behavior, 43(4), 1411-1432.

Vis, B., & Stolwijk, S. B. (2021). Conducting quantitative studies with the participation of political elites: best practices for designing the study and soliciting the participation of political elites. Quality & Quantity, 55(4), 1281-1317.

Stolwijk, S. B., & Schuck, A. R. (2019). More interest in interest: Does poll coverage help or hurt efforts to make more young voters show up at the ballot box?. European Union Politics, 20(3), 341-360.

Stolwijk, S.B. (2019). The Representativeness Heuristic in Political Decision Making. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Political Decision Making. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.981.

Stolwijk, S. B., Schuck, A. R.T. and de Vreese, C. H. (2017). How Anxiety and Enthusiasm Help Explain the Bandwagon Effect. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 29(4), 554-574.doi: 10.1093/ijpor/edw018.

den Hond, F., Stolwijk, S. and Merk, J. (2014). A Strategic-Interaction Analysis of an Urgent Appeal System and Its Outcomes for Garment Workers. Mobilization:        An International Quarterly, 19(1), 83-112.

Dissertation

Stolwijk, S.B. (2017). Who’s driving whom: The media, voters and the bandwagon. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam. http://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/06619114-993b-4678-b81f-128806a9030a