Responding to Emotional Needs: A Comparative Analysis of the Emotional Resonance in Communication on Anti-Immigration Policies

Communication is an essential element of the policymaking process. Problem frames must best tap into existing cultural predispositions and resonate with the public’s needs (Maor, 2024). Addressing emotional needs is of special relevance in the case of protective policies, where security is the key policy promise. While this is achieved by a variety of means, such as reframing a given policy through activating existing policy-relevant frames (Ross, 2000), this paper focuses specifically on the strategic usage of emotional rhetoric by political actors. Considering advancements in the Multiple Streams Framework, I am testing the concept of ‘emotional resonance’ (Maor, 2024) by empirically applying it in an analysis of policy communication on anti-immigration policies in a comparative study including France, the United Kingdom and Germany. Albeit different in regard to political systems and cultural predispositions, these countries all experience a continuous flow of immigrants as well as rising anti-immigration sentiment and radical right populist success. This study reveals that, in the discursive construction of the policy response to public emotional concerns about safety, a range of different discrete emotions is indeed appealed to, with recurring reference to anger, fear, worry and disgust. Although protection claims addressing the emotional needs of the public are made explicit to a varying degree, the protective attribute of each policy is present in both, arguments against and in favour of the policy debated in each country. P10 Affect in Regulatory Governance and Policymaking