The resistible rise of Identity Politics? A cross-cultural analysis of national identity use within right-wing populism and counter-interventions

The proposal seeks to address a growing concern for many western democracies, the increase in right-wing populism and the co-opting of social identities for division, polarisation and discrimination. Using a Social Identity Approach the project proposes a comparative investigation into the use of social identities of 'the people' for division within right-wing populism and the development and evaluation of an intervention against this.
Three research questions guide the project:
RQ1. What are the ways that social identities of 'the people' are constructed within right-wing populism?
RQ2. Are there a set of common themes/strategies in how social identities of 'the people' are used in exclusionary/divisive discourses for political purposes?
RQ3. Can such commonality be used to design interventions against the use of social identities of 'the people' for exclusionary/divisive political purposes?

Research Design Stage 1
The initial investigation will be a comparative documentary analysis during three different political events within two democracies (UK and USA) to explore the first and second research questions on how social identities of 'the people' are constructed within right-wing populism and any common strategies.
The three political events will be the May 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, the US presidential election November 2016, and the UK Brexit referendum June 2016. Sources will be party leader speeches and two newspapers with right-wing editorial lines from a time period of six months leading up to each public vote. Thematic Analysis will be used to analyse sources due to its compatibility with both open ended enquiry and an a priori theoretical framework. The intention is to use both deductive coding, guided by the Social Identity Approach, but also inductive coding, remaining open to novel patterns. The grouping and labelling of themes will be related to the research questions and theoretical framework.
Research Design Stage 2
Stage 2 will use the thematic material from Stage 1 to develop a prejudice reduction intervention. Specifically, this intervention will involve eliciting self-reflexive thought processes about social identities among participants. This principle is based on research which demonstrates that fostering open and deliberative thought process can reduce inflexible, closed thinking behind prejudicial attitudes.
However, there can be difficulty in phrasing findings to non-academic audiences, so to help with the development of an accessible language style we will first hold focus groups with members of the public to talk in an open, co-learning manner about the first stage material. This is guided by practices in participatory action research, where participant knowledge is valued and will inform the co-development of an intervention which is engaging and relevant.
The intervention will be evaluated using a mixed-measure design with between participant factor as condition (intervention vs. control) and within participant factor as attitude measurement (before vs. after). Participants will be recruited and the experiment conducted online, facilitating a larger sample and mimicking how many people experience political content today. Participants' intergroup attitudes will be measured on a self-report Likert-scale, firstly after being shown an article to elicit social identity responses, and once more after the intervention which displays and deconstructs the strategies of social identity use to influence opinion. In control condition participants will experience a message discussing the previous article but without any social identity comments. Strength of in-group identification will be measured before any presentation of material to measure moderation effects on the intervention. Data will be analysed using t-tests and moderated regression analysis.