This project has received funding via the EUI Widening Europe Programme call 2026. The EUI Widening Europe Programme initiative, backed by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in Widening countries, and thus foster a more cohesive European Higher Education and Research area.
INFOPOLDEM is an interdisciplinary project, bridging political science, political psychology and information technologies. It advances the agenda initiated by INFOREPOL which developed two online tools to reduce affective polarisation in Poland: a voting advice application (VAA) informing voters about the positions of the presidential election candidates and an interactive chatbot correcting misperceptions about the supporters of different political parties. A survey conducted in July/August 2025 revealed that the chatbot effectively mitigated polarised attitudes, whereas the VAA did not have a significant impact. INFOPOLDEM draws on the successful features of INFOREPOL, while introducing several crucial innovations.
INFOPOLDEM is innovative with its combined approach on tackling affective polarisation and anti-democratic attitudes. Hungary provides a highly suitable case for such agenda: according to several comparative indicators, it is one of the most polarised countries in partisan-affective terms, while having also suffered the largest democratic backsliding in Europe since 2010 when current prime minister Viktor Orbán came to power. The two phenomena are highly intertwined in Hungary, as a regime divide over democracy itself has become a salient dimension of partisan conflict between the government and opposition camps. As such, democratic backsliding both results from and fuels affective polarisation constituting a vicious circle which suggests that these two issues should be addressed in conjunction.
To reach our aims, we adapt, improve and expand the chatbot that we developed for Poland, and conduct two representative surveys among the Hungarian population. The first (pre-election) survey maps the central misperceptions among and about the supporters of different parties, serving as an input for the chatbot. The second (post-election, experimental) survey tests the effects of the chatbot treatment(s) on both affective polarisation and (anti)-democratic attitudes.
INFOPOLDEM is expected to have a significant political and social impact, fostering a more collaborative, less polarised society that will step up for the Hungarian democracy. In a backsliding democracy like Hungary, certain polarisation between government and opposition parties cannot be avoided. Our project is inspired by the novel idea of constructive polarisation that combines clearly drawn lines between different parties with a unifying tone towards the population.
For more information about the EUI Widening Europe Programme, please visit the official webpage.