Cultural Populism in European Polarised Politics and Societies (WhiKnow)

Month: December 2018

Launching the project

The four-year WhiKnow project started in the beginning January, and we look forward to the four years in the Media and Society programme of the Academy of Finland. We are based at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki – whose main building is featured here in December 2018.

For communications, we tweet on whi_know and with #WhiKnow hashtag. More updates on the project and the progress of our research on this website.

WhiKnow´s trans-generational and interdisciplinary team studies polarisation in contemporary societies, identifying a ´whirl of knowledge´ that intertwines media, politics and science. The project engages in theoretical and comparative empirical work, combining big data with qualitative and experimental research and media ethnography. WhiKnow explores how social media hypes brokers or meaning-makers and how these produce identifications, affects and emotions in polarisation. We first generate big data on social media to find out what polarises, where and how in spring 2019 (EP elections, Brexit). Then we conduct ethnographic research in polarized societies in East Central Europe, and in other polarised/ing societies. This is followed by experimental analysis of emotions and theoretically informed study of the intertwined media, politics and academia, and the role of emotions, humour, populism, transnationalism, and anti-intellectualism in these processes.