Telling citizens how to vote: voting advice applications as a boundary-object for political influence and discussion

Previous research on Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) has focused on the characteristic of users and the electoral outcomes, but the social and public role of VAAs remains unexplored. This article studies VAAs as platforms that shape political discussion during elections. We conceptualize VAAs as technical artifacts that act as boundary objects between candidates, voters, and the media during the campaigning period. Using a large data set of tweets and a set of six thematic interviews with VAA designers, we demon- strate how VAAs work as interfaces that reside between dierent communi- ties and that enable the transfer of knowledge and views across community boundaries. In the light of our analysis, VAAs are performative platforms, who facilitate the voter’s decision-making, oer technological aordances to shape this activity more public, and encourage interaction between voters and candidates. For voters they also appear as resources used to construct political identities. Finally, our analysis reveals the political and purposeful nature of VAAs: they are used by both NGOs and by media as promotional vehicles for agenda-building and marketing.