Objective
Affective polarization, the tendency to view political opponents with hostility, threatens democratic stability and is increasingly fueled by emerging issues such as immigration, multiculturalism, identity politics, or climate change. These issues generate moral conflict, align with partisan cues, and intensify divisions; yet, we lack understanding of how they evolve and why they polarize some contexts but not others.
I develop a dynamic, comparative account of how emerging issues drive affective polarization through their life cycles: how they emerge, gain salience, are framed by elites and media, and either fade or crystallize into lasting social divides. My innovation is threefold:
1. Parliamentary speeches, manifestos, news, and online content will be analysed by natural language processing (NLP) techniques to trace the early evolution of issues across elites, media, and citizens.
2. Panel surveys with survey experiments, combined with dynamic Bayesian networks (DBN), will model how exposure to frames and cues updates beliefs, reinforces identities, and fuels affective divides.
3. Machine learning forecasting models will identify early-warning signals of which issues are most likely to escalate into partisan conflict.
I expect moral and identity-laden issues to polarize more strongly than economic ones, with asymmetric belief updating driven by partisan identities and selective media exposure. Elite and media cues will amplify divides, while illiberal contexts are likely to accelerate polarization more rapidly than resilient democracies.
Focusing on Ireland, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Türkiye, will exploit sharp contrasts in institutional resilience and media systems. Attempting the first cross-national integration of issue life-cycle theory with NLP, survey experiments, and DBN is a high-risk endeavor. Yet it offers both a conceptual leap beyond static accounts of polarization and an empirically grounded early-warning system for democratic fragility.
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. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences data science natural language processing
- social sciences political sciences government systems democracy
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
- natural sciences computer and information sciences artificial intelligence machine learning
- social sciences sociology demography human migrations
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-ADG
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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.
34450 Istanbul
Türkiye
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.