ENCODE is about to run a new, lab-based study that looks at how people react—moment by moment—to political content on social media. Led by ASM Research Solutions Strategy, the research will take place in Poland, Austria, Denmark, and Bulgaria and uses two unobtrusive tools, eye-tracking and face-tracking, alongside a short pre-survey and a post-session interview. Together, these layers let us see not just what people say they feel, but also where they look, how intensely they react, and why—all while keeping identities anonymous and data secure.
Before stepping into the lab, each participant completes a brief questionnaire that places them on a two-axis political map—economic left–right and social libertarian–authoritarian. This simple step helps researchers compare emotional reactions across different viewpoints without tying any response to a name; each person is tracked only by a random code from start to finish.
In the session itself, participants browse realistic feeds built from four fictional political profiles tailored to each country—liberal and conservative, female and male, with pro-EU and EU-sceptic positioning. These profiles carry two families of messages: today’s more polarising styles and ENCODE’s forward-looking, pluralistic narratives that try to bridge divides. The lab setup mirrors an everyday scroll, but under carefully controlled conditions—consistent lighting and sound, calibrated equipment (including Tobii eye trackers), and synchronized recording—so the data are reliable.
What do eye-tracking and face-tracking actually tell us? In plain terms, eye-tracking shows where the gaze lands and for how long. When the eyes pause—what researchers call a fixation—it usually signals interest or relevance; when they jump around—saccades—it often reflects searching or effort. Pupil dilation tends to rise with arousal, a kind of “how activating is this?” signal that doesn’t, by itself, tell us whether the feeling is positive or negative. Years of research back these links, but ENCODE treats them with care and context. No single measure “reads your mind”; the strength lies in combining several signals with what people say in their own words.
Face-tracking complements this picture by registering fleeting changes in facial musculature as people encounter specific words, claims, or images in the feed. Aligned in time with the eye data, these micro-reactions create a simple timeline of “what was on screen” and “what expression surfaced right then.” Because lighting, culture, and personal habits can nudge these signals, the study pairs them with the interview immediately afterwards to check interpretations and hear participants’ explanations in their own voice.
If you’ve ever noticed that an emphatic comment or a looping clip grabs your eyes, you already know one reason this matters. Studies show that emotional tone, expressive punctuation, and dynamic visuals tend to hold the gaze longer than neutral text—useful for understanding why certain posts spread and others sink. ENCODE’s stimuli reflect that reality, mixing text, images, and short videos, then testing whether pluralistic messages can keep
people engaged without stoking “us-versus-them” emotions.
After the viewing, a short, conversational interview helps connect the dots. Participants talk about which posts felt authentic or manipulative, what they trusted, and what stuck with them. Those reflections are analysed alongside the gaze paths, attention heatmaps, and facial-expression traces, as well as each person’s anonymous position on the political compass. Triangulating in this way—survey, biometrics, and interview—turns raw signals into insight about how different styles of communication land with different audiences.
The study is small by design—about 15 people per country, gender-balanced and aged 18–35, recruited through universities and civic networks—so that the team can run carefully controlled sessions in each location. What it may lack in size, it gains in precision: consistent lab conditions, identical protocols, and tightly matched content make it possible to compare results across countries in a meaningful way.
Why does all this matter for everyday democratic life? Attention is the gateway to persuasion, but attention is not the same as agreement. By seeing which cues draw the eye, which moments heighten arousal, and which narratives people later describe as trustworthy or divisive, ENCODE can test whether constructive, pluralistic messages can compete—on real, attention-driven platforms—without amplifying hostility. The result won’t be a “magic formula,” but rather a set of practical, evidence-based guidelines for communicators who want to inform and include, not inflame.
Study methodology: Deliverable D4.1, led by ASM, provides full technical details and literature foundations for the approach described above.