The Project
The MultiPoD project pursues an open, context-aware, multilingual and cross-cultural approach to supporting communication and collaboration in a European Public Space for Citizen Deliberation. It will develop new methods to interconnect existing communities and increase the transparency of political deliberation. Advancing the state of the art in Generative AI for cross-cultural transformation and visualisation will help engage EU citizens to participate in political deliberation across linguistic and socio-cultural boundaries. For policymakers and other professional stakeholders, a visual analytics dashboard will help identify patterns in political communication. For example, such patterns may include origin and impact of inclusion and exclusion strategies, or inherent biases and misconceptions. The dashboard will increase transparency and support multi-level policymaking at the European level.
Barriers to Citizen Deliberation
As the Conference on the Future of Europe highlighted, EU citizens recognize that the interplay between national media discourse and political/cultural contexts affects perceptions and reactions to global events. Language barriers exacerbate siloed thinking, the bandwagon effect, group thinking, and the lack of diversity in dialogue around issues of international relevance. This creates “areas” of thinking entrenched into national and language gates and hinders the creation of a truly European public sphere. Such challenges to democratic participation disproportionally affect members of cultural and linguistic minorities within and across EU member states.
Transforming Political Dialogue
The overarching goal of MultiPoD is to radically transform political dialogue in Europe by establishing an open architecture that seamlessly integrates existing communities within a comprehensive framework. This initiative aims to lower the barriers and costs associated with political participation and tackle context-specific challenges in multilingual and multicultural environments. MultiPoD’s interdisciplinary approach unites experts from various fields, including democracy, technology, sociology, economics, and psychology, to:
- Promote inclusion and dismantle barriers to political participation.
- Support democratic values by reducing bias and depolarising current political debates.
- Develop visual communication strategies that emphasise content clarity over presentation style.
Project summary
| Project number | 101178821 |
| Project name | Multilingual and Multicultural Spaces for Political Deliberation |
| Project acronym | MultiPoD |
| Call | HORIZON-CL2-2024-DEMOCRACY-01 |
| Topic | HORIZON-CL2-2024-DEMOCRACY-01-10 |
| Type of action | HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions |
| Granting authority | European Research Executive Agency |
| Grant managed through EU Funding & Tenders | Yes (eGrants) |
| Project starting date | 1 December 2024 |
| Project end date | 30 November 2027 |
| Project duration | 36 months |