In order to fill the current knowledge gap about the cultural-cognitive multiplicity of meanings (logics of) Cohesion Policy and European identity and identification, this work package has the following objectives:

• To advance an original conceptual account for the importance of social construction and in particular discourse – as use of language – in understanding the impact that cohesion policy might have on EU identity and identification.
• To empirically explore discourse about the EU, implementation of Cohesion Policy and European identity, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and to disentangle several elements of meanings’ multiplicity and complexity:

• The multiplicity of topics – i.e. clusters of concepts that frequently co-occur – in discourse;
• The composition and internal logics of such topics – i.e. which actors are dominant in each topic and what is their logical position against resources and actions to be taken.

• To assess the diverse contribution of relevant actors – i.e. the communication organs of the EU, the policy implementation projects, the local press and activists using new social media – “theorizing” the EU Cohesion Policy and identity at different levels. A related objective entails to highlight the relationship between widely available and often centrally generated meanings of cohesion and identity – i.e. in the content of EU policies and reports; their local variations – i.e. produced by implementation projects, the press and the activists in different regions and cities.
• To validate the proposed conceptual account (through standard statistical analyses) by assessing interregional variations in the association between the presence, co-presence and relative intensity of multiple qualified topics in local discourses on the one hand and citizens’ selection of an “appropriate” logic of European identity and identification with the EU on the other hand.