Martin Moland

• Custodi, Jacopo; Trenz, Hans-Jørg & Moland, Martin (2026). Countering Post-Truth: A Comparative Study of Journalists’ Responses to Disinformation Challenges. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. ISSN 1077-6990. 103(1), p. 114–133. doi: 10.1177/10776990251393745. Full text in Research Archive
• Moland, Martin; Custodi, Jacopo & Trenz, Hans-Jørg (2025). Reinforcing or Rethinking? What Do News Consumers Want From Journalism in the Post-Truth Era? Media and Communication. 13. doi: 10.17645/mac.8823. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Policymakers and news producers have long grappled with the challenges that fake news and misinformation pose to quality journalism. This has given rise to an extensive body of literature, covering various aspects from the characteristics of fake news to strategies for addressing it. However, the preferences of news consumers regarding the future of journalism and their views on how journalistic commitment to truth can best be maintained remain relatively overlooked in scholarly research. This article utilizes primary data from a survey (N = 4,521) fielded in Norway, Italy, and Poland in 2023 to show that, even in contemporary media environments, people continue to regard traditional journalistic ideals as the normative goals for future journalism. This suggests that journalists in an age of post-truth should focus less on rethinking journalism and more on adhering to its traditional goals of unbiased dissemination of facts.

• Jacobs, Nicholas F; Moland, Martin & Parsons, Craig Alexander (2025). Postfunctionalism across the Atlantic: The “New Politics” in European Integration and US Federalism. Publius: The Journal of Federalism. ISSN 0048-5950. 55(4), p. 702–731. doi: 10.1093/publius/pjaf037. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The European Union’s internal market was modeled in part on the United States’ national market, yet public attitudes toward market governance in the two arenas have long been understood through different theoretical lenses. In this article, we apply the postfunctionalist theory of European integration—developed to explain EU citizens’ attitudes toward supranational authority—to American federalism, testing whether cultural identity divides (GAL/TAN) shape public opinion on central market governance in the United States as they do in Europe. Using an original survey of 16,000 respondents across eight EU countries and 4,000 Americans, we find that postfunctionalist dynamics are robust in both contexts, challenging prevailing views that American attitudes toward federalism are driven primarily by Left–Right ideology or material interests. Our findings suggest that identity-based contestation over governance extends beyond the EU’s nation-state politics, requiring a broader theoretical framework to understand the intersection of culture, federalism, and economic integration across advanced democracies.

• Jacobs, Nicholas; Moland, Martin & Parsons, Craig Alexander (2025). Do Citizens Have Views about Single Market Governance? Publius: The Journal of Federalism. ISSN 0048-5950. 55(4), p. 671–701. doi: 10.1093/publius/pjaf034. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  To what degree do citizens hold structured views about the governance of openness in multi-jurisdictional markets? This article presents the results of a preregistered experiment that assesses public attribution of governmental authority with respect to five issues central to market integration. We fielded the survey in the world’s two largest single markets, the United States and the European Union (EU). Across the nine sampled countries (N = 17,304), we find that EU residents are statistically more likely to make federal or geographic distinctions than American respondents, especially in the areas of goods regulations and standardized benefits for workers. We also find that certain subgroups are more likely to favor decentralized policy approaches to single market issues: those skeptical of regulation, those who are less trusting of government, and select partisan affiliates. Europeans’ relatively greater responsiveness is most plausibly explained, we argue, as a result of institutional mobilization. The EU’s single market project has fed back on European societies to attract citizens’ attention to the EU’s core goals of cross-border openness.

• Moland, Martin (2024). Past Political Asymmetry and Present Public Opinion: How Has the Asymmetrical Federation of the EU Shaped Popular Opinion of Its Optimal Shape? Publius: The Journal of Federalism. ISSN 0048-5950. 54(2), p. 361–385. doi: 10.1093/publius/pjae001. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Asymmetries in the formal obligations and rights afforded to sub-units are mainstays of many federations that have been extensively studied from many angles. However, we know relatively little about how these asymmetries shape views on federalism in the future. By leveraging data on differentiated integration in the European Union (EU), conceptually very similar to asymmetrical federalism, and survey data on attitudes toward the optimal future of it, I show that historical exposure to differentiated integration resulting from a bottom-up process of demands for sub-unit autonomy correlates to increased support for permanent differentiation in the future, especially among those critical of the EU. However, the opposite applies to differentiation imposed by the EU. A legacy of asymmetric federalism may thus breed opposition or support for unitary European federalism, depending on both the mode of past asymmetry that citizens have been exposed to and their views of the EU.

• Moland, Martin (2024). Comparing elite and citizen attitudes towards the differentiated implementation of EU law: evidence from a large-N survey of citizens, politicians and bureaucrats. West European Politics. ISSN 0140-2382. p. 1–24. doi: 10.1080/01402382.2024.2421661. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Transnational regulatory harmonisation is a key building block of the international legal order. However, little is known about how elite and citizen views of it differ. Using data from a Norwegian survey from 2023 this article finds both citizen-elite and intra-elite gaps in perceptions of legal harmonisation. First, citizens are significantly less likely to support legal harmonisation than bureaucrats. In contrast, the article finds that their views of it are similar to those of all but the most Eurosceptic politicians. Furthermore, while the attitudes of bureaucrats only differ significantly from those of strongly Eurosceptic politicians, bureaucrats with a ministry or legal background hold views of legal harmonisation significantly different from those of other civil servants. Future studies of public and elite opinion of international cooperation must thus theorise more clearly how the elite-citizen gap may vary for different elites, and empirically test how these differences manifest across policy areas.

• Moland, Martin (2024). Opting out of an EU identity? The effects of differentiated integration on European identity. Journal of European Public Policy. ISSN 1350-1763. p. 1–24. doi: 10.1080/13501763.2024.2402869. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The link between European institutions and European identities remains under-explored. Similarly, we know little about how countries opting out of European integration has helped shape their citizens’ view of themselves as more or less European. Using general synthetic control models and data from 1983 to 2020, I find that people in countries with opt-outs tend to identify as more strongly European in the years after an opt-out is implemented, and most prominently so in the countries where opt-outs responded to a popular demand and were associated with great politicisation. This shows that providing individual countries with greater autonomy may strengthen their citizens’ attachment to Europe, but that any such effect is likely to depend on domestic variations in for instance elite politicisation of European integration.

• Moland, Martin (2023). Opting for Opt-outs? National Identities and Support for a Differentiated EU. Journal of Common Market Studies. ISSN 0021-9886. p. 1–19. doi: 10.1111/jcms.13478. Full text in Research Archive
• Moland, Martin & Michailidou, Asimina (2023). Testing Causal Inference Between Social Media News Reliance and (Dis)trust of EU Institutions With an Instrumental Variable Approach: Lessons From a Null-Hypothesis Case. Political Studies Review. ISSN 1478-9299. doi: 10.1177/14789299231183574. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Given the well-documented negativity bias and attitudinal entrenchment associated with sharing and debating news in social media, a reasonable and already substantially investigated assumption is that those getting news about the European Union (EU) mostly from social media would be more sceptical of its institutions than others. Empirical research on this topic has thus far largely deployed experimental and observational methods to investigate this assumption. We contribute to the existing literature with an instrumental variable approach well-suited to establishing causal relationships in non-experimental data. However, we find no blanket causal relationship between relying on social media for news about the EU polity and becoming less trustful of its institutions. EU policies aiming to tackle negative effects of social media news consumption, therefore, need to be tailored to different demographic groups.

• Moland, Martin (2022). Constraining dissensus and permissive consensus: variations in support for core state powers. West European Politics. ISSN 0140-2382. doi: 10.1080/01402382.2022.2104052. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Public opinion regarding EU integration has become increasingly important in light of both increasing public scepticism to integration and the EU’s gradual shift towards integration of core state powers (CSPs). This article contributes to an emerging literature studying support for integration of core state powers by investigating whether such integration, given its greater potential for polarisation and activation of nationalist identities, is more likely to be opposed than regulatory integration. The results show that some CSP integration may meet greater support than regulatory integration. They also show that a larger number of exclusively national citizens support externally, rather than internally, oriented CSP integration. This suggests that what policy area a policy belongs to may be more important for predicting contestation of its integration than whether it is a core state or regulatory power.

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• Eriksen, Andreas; Eriksen, Erik Oddvar & Moland, Martin (2025). Forvaltningsfilosofi på avveier. Stat & Styring. ISSN 0803-0103. 35(4), p. 41–49. doi: 10.18261/stat.35.4.7. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Nasjonale forvaltningsorganer har misforstått, feiltolket eller ignorert EU-retten i flere saker, og det gjelder å forstå hvorfor dette skjer

• Parsons, Craig Alexander; Jacobs, Nicholas & Moland, Martin (2023). Different federations, same views? Comparing US and EU popular support for a single market. Full text in Research Archive
• Moland, Martin & Michailidou, Asimina (2021). News, Misinformation and Support for the EU: Exploring the Effect of Social Media as Polarising Force or Neutral Mediators. ARENA, Centre for European Studies. Full text in Research Archive
• Moland, Martin (2018). Legitimacy and Trust as Victims of Institutionalized Austerity: A Statistical Analysis of Persistent Effects of Austerity on Trust in and Support for the EU. ARENA Centre for European Studies. ISSN 9788283620160. Full text in Research Archive

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