In POLINEQUAL’s conceptualisation, perceptions of economic inequality – and justice evaluations that instil them – originate from social norms that are deeply rooted in the ‘moral economies’ of welfare regimes and malleable as a function of individual exposure to and receptivity of facts, ideological cues, representations and heuristics of economic inequality.
In principle, the project pursues two paths:
It investigates the nature of interrelationships between media representations, ideological cues and individual perceptions and evaluations of economic inequality and to what extent the latter are conditioned by collectively shared distributive justice norms.
It investigates the impact of politically salient individual perceptions and evaluations of inequality on emotions and political behaviour. Its aim is to develop a theoretical framework which explains the causes and mechanisms of individual perceptions of economic inequality being contingent on national institutional arrangements, ideological cues, media frames and personal heuristics.
The research design is based on a mixed-methods approach, organized in five work packages and combining data derived from online focus groups, discourse and content analysis of party programmes and media representations, representative online surveys and experimental studies.