WP1 is led by ASM and aims to ensure professional management of administrative, scientific, technical, ethical, and financial aspects of the project.

WP2 aims to develop the project’s theoretical approach by identifying, analysing, and comparing the critical theories of emotional politics and assessing their suitability for the project and general validity. Besides, UWR orchestrates the WP partners to develop an innovative theory of affective pluralisation to be a point of reference for further research and to identify the intersections between concepts related to emotional politics, particularly the interaction between affective polarization and related values, and affective pluralization and related values, and affective pluralisation and related values.

The WP3 is devoted to the transformation of communication using social media platforms and the concerns that are related to political interference and the distribution of fake news and disinformation. By collecting many social media discussions, PBY will lead the analysis of the interrelationship between emotions and different political styles and narratives. Additionally, an analysis of emotions related to disinformation concerning traditional media output will also provide significant results for understanding how European political and cultural spaces are evolving and influencing the emotions in politics, along with an insight into some main problems of societal cohesion.

WP4 is focused on eliciting emotional responses and analysing their internal complexity. For that purpose, ASM will coordinate the face-tracking implementation, and the neurobiological data will be contrasted with citizen accounts obtained via in-depth interviews.

WP5 aims to study the consequences of positive and negative emotions in politics. It focuses on multiple core outcomes relevant to the functioning of liberal democracies. Using large-scale data collection in multiple countries, the effects of emotions will be investigated, elicited by political narratives and campaigns on classical and social media, on citizens’ cognitive, identity-related, attitudinal, and behavioural outcomes.

WP6 will function to co-create and test a framework for the design of future emotional narratives tailored to intersectional dynamics in the 6 pilot countries (Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Denmark, North Macedonia, and Poland). This will be achieved through a co-creation approach implemented in citizen innovation labs that will lead to the development of novel emotional narratives that can become the basis for future policymaking. A panel of citizens and experts will evaluate these future narratives using the Delphi method and will be further tested through online vignette experiments.

The main goal of the WP7 is a better integration of the emotional dimension of politics in policies to foster and promote European democracies and values. WP partners collaborate to create a roadmap for policy recommendations and four future scenarios by using a set of predictive indicators of the future emotional responses of Europeans, factoring in outputs from previous WPs. UNSA will lead and initiate the Europe-wide Foresight Network for Emotions in Politics (FNEP) on current and future emotions shaping identities and values.

WP8 ensures that the ENCODE project’s process, outcomes, and findings are widely disseminated, communicated, and accessible to key stakeholders and the public. This WP uses public outreach campaigns, social media strategies, and partnerships with educational institutions to facilitate collaboration, know-how transfer, and create synergies with partners, research organizations, networks, and other similar projects for further initiatives on decoding hate and anger-oriented visual culture narratives. The goal is to ensure a broad uptake of the project’s deliverables, ensuring maximum societal impact.