The core idea is that people compare national and EU responses and take cues from domestic governments, political parties and the media when forming opinions about the EU. We study the impact of the pandemic through six work packages that are clustered into three pillars.

• In the first pillar, we investigate how the policy measures adopted by national governments and EU institutions have affected eurosceptic attitudes, European solidarity and the performance of Eurosceptic parties.
• In the second pillar, we examine how political actors, namely governments, political parties and social movements have influenced EU support.
• Finally, in pillar three, we study how media framing and fake news have influenced public support.

To answer these questions, the interdisciplinary team of leading scholars from political science, sociology and economics relies on an original multi-method approach combining survey, observational and geocoded data with natural, survey and field experiments as well as innovative natural language processing technologies. This research project is funded by a Challenges for Europe grant of the Volkswagen Stiftung (EUR1.5 million, 2022-2026).

Team (UvA)

Consortium

• Humboldt University Berlin, Heike Kluever (PI), Asli Unan (Postdoc)
• London School of Economics: Sara Hobolt (lead), Zachary Dickson (postdoc)
• Pompeu Fabra University: Toni Rodon (lead), Irene Rodriguez Lopez (PhD)
• University of Warsaw: Michal Krawczyk (lead), N.N. (postdoc)