The Politicisation of Economic Inequality: The Impact of Welfare Regimes, Elites’ Discourse and Media Frames on Citizens’ Perceptions, Justice Evaluations and Political Behaviour

Project Information

POLINEQUAL

Grant agreement ID: 866340

DOI

10.3030/866340

EC signature date 2 April 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 30 September 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 846 875,00

EU contribution

€ 1 846 875,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITE GRENOBLE ALPES
France

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - POLINEQUAL (The Politicisation of Economic Inequality: The Impact of Welfare Regimes, Elites’ Discourse and Media Frames on Citizens’ Perceptions, Justice Evaluations and Political Behaviour)

Reporting period: 2023-11-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

POLINEQUAL is a comparative research project which focuses on understanding the causes and political consequences of citizens’ perceptions of economic inequality in France, Great Britain and Sweden.

POLINEQUAL aims to investigate the causes and mechanisms that motivate citizens to respond to economic inequality. Conceptually, it is based on four central assumptions:

1. Perceptions of economic inequality are biased as they are mediated by justice evaluations and, thus, do not mirror objective levels of economic inequality.
2. Perceptions of economic inequality are informed by facts, ideological cues, media representations and personal heuristics.
3. Perceptions and evaluations are malleable to the extent that economic inequality is being politicized and becomes politically salient.
4. Politically salient perceptions and evaluations of economic inequality evoke emotional, attitudinal and behavioural responses.

In POLINEQUAL’s conceptualisation, perceptions of economic inequality – and justice evaluations that instil them – originate from social norms that are deeply rooted in the ‘moral economies’ of welfare regimes and malleable as a function of individual exposure to and receptivity of facts, ideological cues, representations and heuristics of economic inequality. In principle, the project pursues two paths: 1) It investigates the nature of interrelationships between media representations, ideological cues and individual perceptions and evaluations of economic inequality and to what extent the latter are conditioned by collectively shared distributive justice norms. 2) It investigates the impact of politically salient individual perceptions and evaluations of inequality on emotions and political behaviour. Its aim is to develop a theoretical framework which explains the causes and mechanisms of individual perceptions of economic inequality being contingent on national institutional arrangements, ideological cues, media frames and personal heuristics.

The research design is based on a mixed-methods approach, organized in five work packages and combining data derived from online focus groups, discourse and content analysis of party programmes and media representations, representative online surveys and experimental studies.

The work packages are:

WP1: Heuristics of economic inequality (online focus groups)

WP2: Identifying ideological cues of economic inequality in elites’ discourses (discourse and content analysis)

WP3: Mass media’s representations of economic inequality (discourse and content analysis)

WP4: Connecting perceptions and evaluations of economic inequality with their macro-, meso-, and micro-origins and revealing their consequences (representative online surveys)

WP5: Establishing the causality of ideological cues and framing effects (online survey experiments)

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The research team has concluded the fieldwork regarding WP1 (Heuristics of economic inequality (online focus groups))

In each country, POLINEQUAL has examined the meaning and origins of perceptions of economic inequality understood as personal heuristics. 90 minutes’ interviews with online focus groups, that consisted of 6 participants each, 8 groups per country, and were stratified by core socio-demographic and regional attributes, have been carried out between January 2022 and February 2022. For this purpose, we relied on Kantar Public which carried out the entire fieldwork (setup of facilities, recruitment of online participants, moderation of 24 focus groups, transcripts) in a highly professional and recommendable manner.

The qualitative interviews were mainly exploratory in nature and in order to identify and construct meaningful measurement instruments for the surveys (WP 4) and experimental studies (WP 5). They aimed at producing a better understanding of people’s heuristics, such as: what are people’s representations of economic inequality; what is the radius of inequality perceptions and assessments (e.g. geographical: neighbourhoods, communities, regions, country) and what do people feel when they think of economic inequality? Moreover, all focus group participants (145 persons) filled in a survey questionnaire with the purpose of collecting a broader range of values, orientations, attitudes, preferences and explanations regarding economic inequality. Currently, the team members have completed the coding and are analysing the qualitative and quantitative datasets. First results were presented in June 2022 at the 5th ReNEW Conference in Stockholm and in July 2022 at the International Society of Political Psychology Conference in Athens.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The expected results can be assigned to three different areas. Scientifically, the objective is 1) to initiate a paradigmatic shift in economic inequality research which explains the formation and effects of citizens‘ inequality perceptions by linking factors of socialisation (macro-) and politiciation (meso-) with the micro-level, 2) to transpose this theoretical advancement to disciplines concerned with individuals‘ emotions, attitudes and behaviour, and, 3) to promote research on individual-level effects in Political Communication, Sociology, Social Psychology and Behavioral Economics. For society, the aim is 1) to raise public awareness of politicisation processes en-grained in communication, and 2) to enhance individuals‘ understanding of the principles of their perception formation, justice evaluation and decision-making processes. As to the political realm, POLINEQUAL intends to raise elites‘ awareness for more „inclusive“ discourses on economic inequality.

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