The European Union in the Public Imagination: Maximising the Impact of Transdisciplinary Insights

The aim, during this fellowship, is to provide a unique trans-disciplinary contribution to the debate about the relationship between the UK and the European Union.

The outputs from this fellowship will contribute to the programme's focus on attitudes towards the EU, including intra-UK regional variations in attitudes to the EU. Innovative interdisciplinary data sources on social and political attitudes to the EU and their drivers will be mined and analysed. The findings will be made accessible to policy-makers, political elites and to the wider public using novel applications of social media, direct collaboration with the mainstream media, and a public art installation as well as more traditional user engagement strategies. On a smaller scale, to keep coverage of what will be a rapidly shifting landscape current, some innovative ongoing research will be conducted.

Continued UK membership of the European Union (EU), at least on the current terms of membership, increasingly appears to be in question. Traditionally an 'awkward partner' in the EU (George 1990), the UK as a whole has exhibited consistently low levels of attachment to the EU in cross-national opinion surveys. Prime Minister Cameron has promised that in the event of a Conservative victory in 2015, he will hold a referendum on continued EU membership of his country. At the same time, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), an avowedly Eurosceptic party, became the UK's largest party - with one third of the UK's seats - at the European Parliament elections of 2014.

Yet, polls show support for EU membership in the UK to be peaking at its highest level in more than two decades (for example, IPSOS MORI Political Monitor, October 2014). Support for staying in the EU is highest in London (66%) and Scotland (60%). This poses a crucial dilemma to any vote-seeking political actor with anti-EU aspirations: how much does one move in the direction of proposing an anti-EU vision to a relatively Eurosceptic public, before one triggers a pro-EU backlash among the same public? Understanding how individual attachment to the EU is shaped and how context interacts with, and impacts upon, that attachment are matters of considerable contemporary interest to political elites, policy-makers and the general public.

Recent advances in transdisciplinary methods, offer significant potential for the social sciences to make a unique contribution to explaining and predicting the responses of the public to changing political contexts and policy environments. Extensive opinion poll data exists but there is, as yet, no widely reported-on indirect political metric or psychological equivalent to, for example, Yougov or Panelbase. Drawing on extensive existing material (including experimental self-reports, physiological (hormone) testing data, neurological data from fMRI scanning and behavioural data) the applicant will address this gap in public knowledge in relation to EU developments. In addition, the shifting mood of the public on EU-related matters will be tracked throughout the period of the fellowship. Twitter analytics including sentiment-ratings, will be monitored; a visual twitter 'gallery', of photo, video and vine uploads, will be analysed, curated and made available using storify; and facial-coding of emotional responses to EU-related topics will be examined in collaboration with crowdEmotion http://www.crowdemotion.co.uk.

Engagement with political elites, business leaders, policy-makers and the general public are central to this fellowship. Engagement is intrinsic to the creative research methods employed and is essential to maximise the scope, reach and validity of the measures developed. As well as a producing an ongoing stream of blogs, media contributions, wider networking and provision of talks to user groups throughout the fellowship period, the applicant has developed an innovative impact strategy (see Pathways to Impact document) making full use of advances in the field of cloud-based technologies and social media resources to maximise the scope and depth of the impact of the fellowship.

Policy impact:
The question of the relationship between the UK and the EU is generating considerable uncertainty. Decision-making under conditions of uncertainty is both challenging and risky. The UK in a Changing Europe programme has a key role to play in informing decision-makers and those affected by the decisions that they take. The research agenda identified here provides new means of evaluating the impact of policy decision on public attitudes and behaviours. Direct engagement of the applicant with, for example, the Behavioural Insights Team sponsored by the Cabinet Office, will maximimise the opportunities for direct policy impact.

Political Impact:
The insights developed here offer new tools and insights for political campaigners on both sides of the debate to consider as they develop their campaigns. This applies not only to political parties, but to pro and anti-EU campaigners, as well as to groups concerned with a specific policy issue and with how the public are responding to that issue and to the campaigns surrounding it. The blogs and briefings provided by the applicant will target this audience directly.

Business impact:
Business leaders face similar issues in relation to decision-making the context of uncertainty around the future of the UK's relationship with the EU. The issue of public trust in information sources is a particular concern. The applicant will address this issue specifically in her presentation to a roundtable of business leaders organised by London First. Business leaders also have a wider interest in the application of some of the public attitude metrics being developed by the applicant, specifically an interest in how these might be applied more widely in relation to product confidence, brand loyalty and for advertising purposes. The applicant will address this issue in her presentation to Price Waterhouse Cooper (pwc UK) staff and their clients.

Public Impact:
The public is at the heart of this project. How they imagine the EU and what shapes these imaginings will be integral at all stages. To ensure that the public impact and input is maximised, an accessible digital twitter gallery #myimageoftheEU will be promoted in the media. The public can not only view this gallery but can contribute to its creation. The question of the UK's relationship with the EU has profound implications for UK citizens. The tools generated here will make this debate accessible to 'hard to reach' communities and to young voters perhaps engaging with EU issues for the first time.

Impact on the UK and a Changing Europe Programme:
The applicant would seek to identify synergies with the work of other fellows and projects in the programme. For example, the substantive focus of another project (eg. on the Eurozone, citizenship or the EU budget) might be a suitable topic for one of the proposed themed public-mood barometers. Similarly, some of the ideas proposed here, such as the Twitter Town Hall meeting, might also be implemented on a programme-wide basis. The innovative methods proposed will produce exciting content, which can be used to enhance the programme's web presence and to maximise wider engagement with the programme.