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The European Polarisation Observatory (EPO) selected as part of major European research hubs in 2026

The European Polarisation Observatory, led by Pedro Ramaciotti Morales, a research associate at the médialab, is one of the four research hubs launched by CIVICA in 2026.

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The European university alliance CIVICA will launch four Research Hubs in 2026. Their aim is to support pedagogical innovation and research in the social sciences, as well as to encourage the launch of new projects, whilst serving as connecting points within a wider research network across Europe. 

These hubs bring together research teams from the alliance’s ten member universities, combining different disciplines and perspectives of expertise. They will offer workshops, conferences and collaborative events to bring together researchers both within and outside the alliance. All of them will benefit from an 18-month programme of seed funding support.

The European Polarisation Observatory (EPO), led by Pedro Ramaciotti Morales, is one of the four initiatives selected from a shortlist of twelve.

EPO: Mapping the impact of AI and social media on European democracy

Digital platforms are reshaping European democracies. Social media and AI influences how people access information, form opinions, and interact with others online. These technologies affect political debates, voting behaviour, and public engagement in ways that are often complex and interconnected. Understanding these dynamics requires new research methods that combine social science, data science, and computational approaches, bringing together insights from multiple disciplines to study how digital ecosystems influence society.

Scaling the European Polarisation Observatory (SEPO) is a project to scale the capacities and reach of the European Polarisation Observatory (EPO), one of the first CIVICA Research Hubs. Running from January 2026 to June 2027, it is investigating how social media and AI shape political attitudes, social polarisation, and public debates across Europe. Building on the infrastructure of the European Polarisation Observatory, SEPO provides a collaborative platform for researchers, students, and policymakers to share data, methods, and findings.

The European Polarisation Observatory (EPO) was created thanks to CIVICA funding in 2021, as an initiative to study phenomena at the crossing of public opinion, AI, and social media, revisiting platform studies with political frameworks adapted for European settings. Now recognised as a CIVICA Hub, the European Polarisation Observatory (currently funded by the SEPO grant) is a pivotal point and emergent infrastructure for the collection, treatment, and sharing of large-scale data for social sciences studies of digital environments and technologies such as AI systems. EPO acts as a data mutualisation system, covering social media and web data, and data relevant for the study of AI systems such as recommender systems or conversational agents.

—  Pedro Ramaciotti Morales, Associate Member of Sciences Po médialab

To find out more about the other Sciences Po projects selected by CIVICA, click here