E-MINDFUL: Building a balanced public dialogue on migration and migrants

Migration occupies central stage in the public debate. Few other topics attract as much misinformation and polarisation of opinions as migration today. The EU supported E-MINDFUL project aims to help investigate the key factors that shape public perceptions about migration and migrants. Its goal is to provide guidance on how to build effective communication strategies that can reduce polarisation.

This EU co-funded project is focused on assessing communication initiatives – such as infotainment products, awareness raising campaigns, commercials and TV series – and testing them on audiences in six European countries: Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Italy, North Macedonia and Serbia. It focuses on the population share that has neither strongly negative nor positive views on migration.  

After assessing the public’s response to these communication initiatives, the results are then analysed and categorised into the main narratives adopted by European citizens on migration. The project then highlights a series of key findings, on what proved effective or not when communicating on migration.

The project is due to provide:

• A set of lessons learned from communication campaigns carried out by the European Commission;
• A set of pilot prototypes for communication campaigns tailored and tested on key audiences;
• An assessment of effective communication strategies that resonate with key audiences;
• A comprehensive, evidence-based, action-oriented set of guidelines and tools to steer future communication strategies on migration.

These findings will feed into the expertise of the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA), the International Labour Organization Office for Central and Eastern Europe (ILO), and the European University Institute (EUI), among others.