About us

Three people building compasses

A small group, between research and production. What interests us is the instrument that measures correctly, not the campaign that sounds good.

The team

Mihnea S. Stoica

Research and methodology

Holds the methodological design, the interpretation of the data and the link to the academic literature. He researches political communication and populism: the method used here is the one he teaches and publishes.

Background

Associate professor and doctoral supervisor at Babeș-Bolyai University; PhD summa cum laude.
Director of the FreshVOTE and MeVsPopulism projects.
Presenter at TVR Cluj since 2017 and director of the Dutch Cultural and Academic Centre.
Former adviser at the European Parliament.

Published by Mihnea S. Stoica

The Political Compass. Gamifying Political Communication in Romania · 2023
FreshVOTE · 2024
MeVsPopulism

political communicationpopulismresearch designacademic publishing

Teodor-Mihai Cosma

Instruments and data

Builds the platforms end to end: the questionnaire, the matching algorithm, the front end and the infrastructure. His doctoral research is on applied language models, and the civic platforms on this site came out of it.

Background

PhD candidate in communication sciences at FSPAC, Babeș-Bolyai University.
Teaching assistant at the same faculty.
Built FreshVOTE as his master’s thesis.

Next.jsdata pipelinesapplied LLMsedge infrastructure

Jessica A. Eke

Methodological rigour and analysis

Holds the sample, the item validation and the statistical analysis. She writes the method note that ships with every result — including the part that says what cannot be claimed from the data.

Background

Sociologist, a SOCASIS graduate of Babeș-Bolyai University.
Master’s in strategic human resource management.

statistical analysissample designitem validationmethod notes

We started from a simple frustration: the instruments meant to help people orient themselves politically were either imported without adaptation or thrown together in a hurry, with no method behind them.

Since then we have been building compasses and questionnaires in two countries, each from scratch: the items, the algorithm, the interface, the infrastructure. A project starts with a research question and ends with a public platform. The results land in the press and in peer-reviewed publications alike.

Transparent method

We publish the method with the instrument. Anyone who wants to challenge a result has somewhere to start.

Built for the outcome

An instrument nobody uses measures nothing. We design for completion and for sharing, not for the portfolio.

Privacy

Data is anonymised from day one, collected with consent, and used only for the purpose announced.

References

Published and funded

The work and the projects the instruments on this site came out of. Identifiers we do not hold yet — ISBN, DOI, a project page — get filled in as they arrive. None of them are invented.

Book
Stoica, M. S. (2023). The Political Compass. Gamifying Political Communication in Romania. Accent, Cluj-Napoca
Written by the researcher who owns this studio’s methodology.
Funded project
Stoica, M. S. (dir.). (2024). FreshVOTE. Funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The project the studio’s first compass came out of.
Funded project
Stoica, M. S. (dir.). MeVsPopulism. Funded by UEFISCDI
Research on populism, directed from the same team.

Affiliations

The institutions behind it

Babeș-Bolyai UniversityWhere the research is anchored. Busola Eurosceptică runs here.

TVR ClujPicked up Busola Media. Mihnea S. Stoica has presented here since 2017.

UEFISCDIFunder of the MeVsPopulism project.

Dutch Ministry of Foreign AffairsFunder of the FreshVOTE project.

European ParliamentMihnea S. Stoica advised here.

Dutch Cultural and Academic CentreDirected by Mihnea S. Stoica.

APSA