OppAttune – Countering Oppositional Political Extremism

The Center for Critical Democracy Studies (CCDS) is a member of the “OppAttune – Countering Oppositional Political Extremism Through Attuned Dialogue: Track, Attune, Limit” research project for Horizon Europe 2023, funded by the European Research Council.

OppAttune brings together an ambitious multi-disciplinary team of academics and practitioners to examine the evolution of political extremism and its influence on social and political dialogue with the aim to track, attune and limit the spread of oppositional extreme narratives.

The three objectives of the project are defined as follows:

1. To track the evolution of extreme political narratives within media, local ecologies and living democracies and establish the psychological, sociological and anthropological drivers of extremism.
2. To attune capacity for public dialogue by modelling how the evolution of extreme political narratives impact social and political dialogue.
3. To limit the rise of extreme political narratives and their potential to become violent political transformations disrupting democratic processes such as democratic elections.

OppAttune is a Horizon Europe-funded research project initiated in April 2023, uniting 17 partners across Europe and beyond. Its primary objective is to develop an innovative Attunement Model aimed at tracking, attuning, and limiting the spread of extreme political narratives. Unlike initiatives that focus solely on overt hate speech or violence-inciting discourse, OppAttune addresses the subtler proliferation of extreme narratives that permeate everyday conversations, leading to what is termed "everyday extremism." 

The project operates on three levels:

1. Macro-Level: Examines legal, historical, and economic factors influencing citizens' lives.
2. Meso-Level: Investigates the impact of media, online spaces, local democracies, and citizens' engagement with political binaries.
3. Micro-Level: Explores individual interactions with extreme narratives and their capacity to maintain constructive political dialogues.

OppAttune's target audiences include the general public, young citizens, media influencers, practitioners and policymakers, political actors, and the scientific research community. By 2026, the project aims to provide open-access toolkits and evidence-based recommendations to enhance democratic resilience and counter the influence of extreme political narratives. 

The project also plans to host an OppAttune Summer Academy for students and researchers in 2025 and a Winter Academy for practitioners and policymakers in 2026, fostering education and collaboration in combating political extremism.

The website "Human Rights and Public Regulation: Preserving Freedoms in an Age of Everyday Extremism" serves as an interactive toolkit developed by the OppAttune project. It addresses the challenge of balancing human rights with public regulation to mitigate polarization and counteract everyday extremism. The toolkit introduces the "Regulatory-Rights Prism," a framework designed to assist policymakers in creating dynamic and responsive policies that promote social cohesion while safeguarding freedoms. It offers diagnostic tools and case studies across various topics, including indigenous rights, migration, neural rights, offshoring and protectionism, populism, religious minorities and pluralism, gender, and violence against women. These resources aim to provide valuable insights and lessons for policymakers, analysts, and scholars in navigating the complexities of rights and regulations in contemporary society.