Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENCODE (ENCODE - Unveiling emotional dimensions of politics to foster European democracy)
Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-05-31
Over the past few years, democratic institutions throughout Europe have been confronted with mounting challenges associated with emotional polarisation, misinformation and an increasing emotional gap between citizens and decision-makers. Though emotions have never been absent from political existence, their function - particularly in enabling constructive involvement - has largely been overlooked. Rather, political life has become ever more dominated by fear, outrage and mistrust, further fuelled by crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine. The advancement of populist discourses and conspiracy theories also illustrates the pressing requirement to comprehend and redefine the emotional aspects of political conduct and communication.
The ENCODE project fills this urgent gap by seeking to reveal the emotional aspects of politics in order to promote European democracy. It proposes the novel idea of affective pluralisation - a move away from polarising affective division towards emotional diversity and coexistence within political debate. ENCODE's main goal is to decode the dynamics between emotions, values, identities, and behaviour, and to re-encode this understanding into democratic narratives and policy-making approaches that strengthen trust, empathy, and democratic resilience.
To do this, ENCODE takes a multidisciplinary and multi-methodological stance that brings together knowledge from social sciences and humanities disciplines such as political science, sociology, philosophy, psychology and behavioural science. It employs an extensive methodological triangulation: sentiment analysis of social media data, biometric measurements (e.g. face-tracking), in-depth interviews, behavioural experiments, panel surveys and citizen innovation labs. These are applied in six European countries (including EU candidate countries) to have geographical and cultural diversity.
The ENCODE project fills this urgent gap by seeking to reveal the emotional aspects of politics in order to promote European democracy. It proposes the novel idea of affective pluralisation - a move away from polarising affective division towards emotional diversity and coexistence within political debate. ENCODE's main goal is to decode the dynamics between emotions, values, identities, and behaviour, and to re-encode this understanding into democratic narratives and policy-making approaches that strengthen trust, empathy, and democratic resilience.
To do this, ENCODE takes a multidisciplinary and multi-methodological stance that brings together knowledge from social sciences and humanities disciplines such as political science, sociology, philosophy, psychology and behavioural science. It employs an extensive methodological triangulation: sentiment analysis of social media data, biometric measurements (e.g. face-tracking), in-depth interviews, behavioural experiments, panel surveys and citizen innovation labs. These are applied in six European countries (including EU candidate countries) to have geographical and cultural diversity.
During the first reporting period (June 2024 – May 2025), the ENCODE project made strong progress in building the theoretical, methodological and empirical foundation needed to meet its core objectives. The project’s interdisciplinary approach - drawing from political science, sociology, psychology and computational methods - has been central to these achievements.
Work Package 2 delivered the project’s conceptual backbone, including the development of the innovative concept of affective pluralisation and a comprehensive theoretical framework on emotional politics. A cross-country review was also completed, setting the stage for upcoming empirical work.
In parallel, Work Package 3 advanced digital emotion analysis by completing a review of computational techniques (D3.1) and a methodological framework for social media sentiment analysis (D3.2). Following access to X and TikTok APIs, data extraction and annotation began. Work also started on a best practices catalogue to counter emotional disinformation online.
Work Package 4 focused on the biometric and qualitative elicitation of emotions, producing a detailed methodology for experiments using face- and eye-tracking tools. These efforts will help uncover differences between physiological and self-reported emotional responses.
Work Package 5, though scheduled for the second year, saw early progress with the development of experimental designs and behavioural games (T5.1–T5.2) and a two-wave pilot panel survey in Austria (T5.4). Scoping reviews were completed on political engagement and the role of gender and gender identity (T5.5–T5.6). These efforts supported key project objectives on polarisation, populism and identity.
Finally, Work Package 6 initiated the development of a co-creation methodology to guide future citizen innovation labs focused on emotionally grounded policymaking.
Work Package 2 delivered the project’s conceptual backbone, including the development of the innovative concept of affective pluralisation and a comprehensive theoretical framework on emotional politics. A cross-country review was also completed, setting the stage for upcoming empirical work.
In parallel, Work Package 3 advanced digital emotion analysis by completing a review of computational techniques (D3.1) and a methodological framework for social media sentiment analysis (D3.2). Following access to X and TikTok APIs, data extraction and annotation began. Work also started on a best practices catalogue to counter emotional disinformation online.
Work Package 4 focused on the biometric and qualitative elicitation of emotions, producing a detailed methodology for experiments using face- and eye-tracking tools. These efforts will help uncover differences between physiological and self-reported emotional responses.
Work Package 5, though scheduled for the second year, saw early progress with the development of experimental designs and behavioural games (T5.1–T5.2) and a two-wave pilot panel survey in Austria (T5.4). Scoping reviews were completed on political engagement and the role of gender and gender identity (T5.5–T5.6). These efforts supported key project objectives on polarisation, populism and identity.
Finally, Work Package 6 initiated the development of a co-creation methodology to guide future citizen innovation labs focused on emotionally grounded policymaking.
Not applicable at this stage of project execution.