Presentations at RTR Medien and the Parliamentary Administration
On 26 May 2026, the key findings of the study were presented at RTR Medien. The focus was on current developments in digital skills in Austria and on the question of how well citizens are able to navigate and act in the digital space. The seven groups of digitally active Austrians identified range from self-assured users with low levels of competence to actively improvising technology users.⠀Based on this, a discussion about whether these groups are able to deal with inaccurate information took place.
On 29 May 2026, Dimitri Prandner (LIFT_C | Open Research Data Infrastructure Lab at JKU and AUSSDA) presented the key findings at the Parliamentary Administration’s ‘FachMittag’ event. The focus there was on the study’s findings regarding disinformation. Analysis of the project data shows that whilst dealing with misleading information is seen as a problem by large sections of the population, vulnerability to disinformation is strongly dependent on one’s worldview. In particular, people with right-wing political views have difficulty distinguishing false information from accurate information.
Research reports and data on Digital Skills Austria
The Digital Skills Austria study is an annual panel study, conducted since 2022, which assesses the ability of the Austrian online population to navigate the digital world, find their way around it and actively help shape it. The research reports from this series of studies are freely available via Zenodo (in German only):
- Digital Skills Austria 2022
- Digital Skills Austria 2023
- Digital Skills Austria 2024
- Digital Skills Austria IV – Topgrafie digitaler Fähigkeiten (2025)
- Digital Skills Austria IV – Resilienz gegenüber Desinformation (2025)
The data sets from previous years are available for scientific reuse via the AUSSDA Dataverse:
The publication of the Scientific Use Files for waves 3 and 4 is currently in preparation. The datasets will be published via AUSSDA throughout 2026, thereby making them available to the national and international research community for further analysis.
The study series has been conducted since 2022 on behalf of RTR – Rundfunk und Telekom-Regulierungs-GmbH and makes an important contribution to monitoring digital skills, digital participation and resilience to disinformation in Austria. It is carried out in cooperation with JKU, the University of Salzburg and the market research institute Marketagent GmbH (fieldwork).
