ArgLab wins the Collaborative Research Award Santander Totta / NOVA

ArgLab researcher, Dima Mohammed is one of the winners of the  Collaborative Research Award Santander Totta / NOVA 2017. Together with Catherine Moury (IPRI-FCSH) &  João Leite (NOVA LINCS-FCT), she is Principal Researcher of the project The Politics of constraints: Discursive strategies in a three-level game. The award-winning research seeks to determine how political decision-makers in Portugal, France and Spain legitimize their public policy choices in public opinion at a time when governments are strongly constrained by international actors, particularly by the European Union and the financial markets. The multidisciplinarity of the team allowed to develop an innovative methodology that analyzes both qualitative and quantitative argumentative discourse. The intention is to advance knowledge in these three fields (Political Science, Argumentation and Computation) and create opportunities to build future interdisciplinary collaborations.

Full info

Project: The Politics of Constraint: discursive strategies in a three-level game

Funding Source: Collaborative Research Award Santander Totta/Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

Participant Institutions: IPRI-NOVA, IFILNOVA & NOVA LINCS

Timeframe: September 2017 - August 2018

Abstract: This project is about political actors’ discourses and their effects on citizens. In times in which governments are much constrained by international actors (such as financial speculators and European Union) we wish to understand how policy-makers - in Portugal, France and Spain - legitimate their choices to the public. We additionally study whether and how politicians manage to reconcile these discourses with the political legitimation of their function, as discourses of ‘non alternative’ might make them appear powerless and indistinguishable. We also look at how non-governing actors, such as Trade Union, engage discursively with governments in such circumstances. Finally, we study how “ordinary citizens” perceive and discuss the arguments made by political actors. The project brings together political scientists and argumentation scholars from FCSH and computer scientists from FCT; allowing for an innovative methodology that qualitatively and quantitatively analyses argumentative discourse. Our intention is to foster advancement in the three fields and create opportunities to build further interdisciplinary collaboration.

Members of the Team:

Adam Standring
Angie Gago
Catherine Moury (Coordinator IPRI-NOVA)
Daniel Cardoso
Dima Mohammed (Coordinator IFILNOVA)
Elisabetta De Giorgi
João Leitão
João Leite (Coordinator NOVA LINCS)
Marcin Lewinski
Pellegrino Cammino
Teresa Romão

More info here, and here.