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Mediating the Future: The Social Dynamics of Public Projections

Project description

Explaining how public expectations evolve

People usually try to anticipate the future in order to make sense of it and adapt to what may happen as an implication of important issues. The sources of these projections include elections, crises and wars as well as other events that are communicated, formulated and negotiated via the media. This complex process has an enormous impact on societies and their expectations or actions and, thus, requires deep understanding. The EU-funded PROFECI project will study the dynamics of public projections in an interdisciplinary approach, by focusing on several retrospective case studies (Brexit referendum, the war in Syria) and three real-time case studies. PROFECI will explain how projections evolve, how politicians contribute to them and how they can be publicly adopted.

Objective

Peoples lives, both as individuals and at the collective level, are guided by projections about the future. This project aims to understand the complex processes through which projections about political issues, such as the outcomes and implications of elections, referenda, crises or wars, are formulated and negotiated within and through the media. It develops a new interdisciplinary approach and research tools for studying how projections evolve over time and through the contribution of various social actors (such as politicians, experts and journalists), and how they are received and acted upon by the public. The focus is on at least three retrospective case studies (projections about the Brexit referendum; the civil war in Syria; and Donald Trump's presidential bid) as well as three real-time case studies (to be selected based on geopolitical developments), characterised by high-visibility and involving projections with far-reaching implications. PROFECI integrates cutting-edge qualitative, quantitative and automated approaches to capture the interactive process underlying the construction and evolution of public projections, and their reciprocal relationship with peoples expectations and behaviour. It begins with an in-depth investigation of the construction, transformation and reception of projections made by key actors, using textual analysis of the source projections and their journalistic coverage, reconstruction interviews with experts and journalists, and focus groups with public members. The results of this stage inform the development of tools for a large-scale diachronic automated text analysis and panel surveys, which will be applied to the real-time and the retrospective case studies. By elucidating the life cycle of projections in a mediated environment, PROFECI opens up new avenues for understanding and researching adaptive social processes, such as self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecies, and the role of the media in shaping the future.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2018-STG

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Host institution

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 499 732,00
Address
EDMOND J SAFRA CAMPUS GIVAT RAM
91904 JERUSALEM
Israel

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 499 732,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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