Politicians and political parties can respond in their communication to feelings of dissatisfaction that exist among parts of the population. This research shows how and to what extent political actors do this and what effect this communication strategy has on electoral support, political trust and polarisation on the one hand and on political decision-making processes on the other hand. Central is the notion of ‘discontent framing’, which consists of the use of populist communication, incivility and (accusations of the use of) disinformation. Those elements jointly capture a commonly used and coherent communicative repertoire. The project exists of different (PhD) sub-projects where we use content analyses, surveys and experiments to investigate the causes, content and consequences of discontent framing. The project is funded by a VICI grant of the Dutch science foundation (NWO) awarded to Rens Vliegenthart.
Data-Driven Democracy Lab 