Project description
Exploring political manipulation, hostile rhetoric and populist appeals
In the perplexing landscape of 21st-century politics, the rise of illiberal leaders has sparked concern and intrigue. Their extensive use of propaganda, grand displays of support and the spread of hostile rumours raises the question: Do these manipulation tactics genuinely sway public opinion? The EU-funded ICMAN project will answer this question by studying hostile rhetoric, political misinformation campaigns and populist appeals to fairness intuitions, and work to decipher their effects on citizens. With an approach that combines insights from comparative politics and psychological science, ICMAN uses a variety of methodological tools and original survey data from Denmark, Hungary and the United States to explore the susceptibility of citizens to manipulation under different political contexts.
Objective
"The widespread popular support for illiberal leaders seeking to subvert democracy is one of the more puzzling and concerning developments in the 21st century. From Putin through Orbán to Erdogan, illiberal leaders invest large resources into propaganda, organize grandiose displays of support, and promote hostile rumours about their enemies. But do such attempts at manipulation shape citizens' support and acceptance of the illiberal leader? Prior research yields conflicting expectations. On the one hand, research in psychology and political behaviour identified a plethora of cognitive biases, which undermine citizens' ability to punish leaders for their mistakes or wrongdoings. On the other hand, recent evidence shows that people are difficult to persuade, making it unlikely that propaganda could change the minds of citizens who are critical of an illiberal leader. To adjudicate between these accounts, this project will a) develop a novel framework for studying the effects of illiberal manipulation strategies and will examine the effects of multiple manipulation attempts, such as b) hostile rhetoric, c) political misinformation campaigns, and d) populist appeals to fairness intuitions. The project builds on an interdisciplinary framework bridging insights from comparative politics and psychological science, and will employ a diverse set of methodological tools from multiple survey experiments (vignette, conjoint, and cultural transmission designs) as well as quantitative text analysis. Original comparative survey data from Hungary, the US, and Denmark will be used to compare citizens' susceptibility to manipulation under different political environments. The project contributes to the European Commission's priority of ""a new push for European democracy"" by informing pro-democracy stakeholders and citizens on the perils of illiberal citizen manipulation."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- humanitieslanguages and literatureliterature studiesliterary genresessays
- social sciencespolitical sciencesgovernment systemsdemocracy
- social sciencespsychology
You need to log in or register to use this function
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
1051 Budapest
Hungary