Change in German mass belief systems after Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, German chancellor Olaf Scholz said this event was a watershed (Zeitenwende). “And that means”, he elaborated, “that the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before”. In this project, we understand this claim as a hypothesis, and we test it at the level of German mass belief systems about foreign and security policy. We provide an analytical scheme for the types of changes in belief systems that might have taken place (and why), and examine empirically whether they actually did. Starting from the idea that attitudes are organized in belief systems, we theorize that two types of changes may occur: (1) Changes in attitudes toward different topics (horizontal dimension) and at different levels of specificity (vertical dimension) (2) Changes in associations between attitudes (horizontal and vertical). In terms of mechanisms, we consider two: Changes in belief systems may come about either as a result of individuals’ independent processing of information about external events (in this case Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) or as a reaction to strategic elite communication. The decisive factor here is that both mechanisms are based on the information environment in which the individual thinks and acts. From there, the answer to the question of individual attitude change lies in answering the more specific questions of what slices of the information environment (i.e. of the external events and elite communication) reach an individual, are processed, and how. Rather than empirically investigate these two mechanisms and each step of information processing in detail, we set a less ambitious goal in this project. These theoretical ideas rather direct our attention to the presumably relevant aspects of the information environment. This allows us---with the help of some simplifying assumptions---to formulate expectations about possible changes. Namely, we will describe the elements of the information environment that seem potentially relevant for individuals’ reactions. On this basis, we will hypothesize average changes under the assumption that this information reaches citizens and is processed by them. Second, we will discuss how the information environment and the reception and processing of information might differ based on several individual characteristics. As elaborated below, we will register both hypotheses and research questions, depending on how certain we are about the characterization of the information environment and how strong the available theories are. The project uses observational data from the GLES Panel survey (see most recent published version: GLES (2021). GLES Panel 2016-2021, Waves 1-15. GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA6838 Data file Version 5.0.0, https://doi.org/10.4232/1.13783). The panel waves bracket the beginning of Russia’s war against Ukraine to test the hypotheses and explore the research questions. By analyzing responses to survey items that were included both before and after the invasion, the data structure allows us to study stability and change in foreign and security attitudes and their association at the intra-individual level. Before- and after-invasion measures of a range of topics are available, allowing an analysis of the implication of the invasion for different domains and hierarchical levels of German citizens’ belief systems. This registration is done before the post-invasion wave data collection is completed.