Cultural Codes in Crisis: Unsettled Civil Spheres in Brexit, the 2016 US Presidential Election, and the 2017 German Federal Election

Populism is rising. While some academics and political commentators warn this is a threat for the stability of liberal democracies, others see it as a sign of democratic resilience. One thing is for certain, populism is rocking the boat. From Brexit in the United Kingdom to the rise of the far-right AfD party in Germany and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, populism is challenging foundational elements of Western democratic social orders. The EU-funded CODE_FLUX project will research political campaigns and media coverage of these three democratic votes. It will investigate the scope and intensity of these challenges, focusing on the meaning structures, or cultural codes and justification narratives. The project will use structural hermeneutics (qualitative) and a digital technique of computational hermeneutics (quantitative).