The presentation is a report from an empirical study of social media posts of Members of European Parliament from seven Central European countries: Austria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, funded by the Polish National Science Centre. It utilizes diverse methodology, from framing analysis to narrative analysis, in synthesis with political theories of polarization, in order to reveal the overarching patterns existing within the discourse around the European Green Deal.

The presentation highlights the dominant framings of EGD (pro-EGD and anti-EGD narratives and their different aspects). In order to reveal strategic instrumentality and convergence of these framings the study describes and compares the narrative elements present in social media discourse, such as heroes, villains, pawns, false idols, victims, etc. It identifies attempts at evoking specific, both positive and negative, emotions attached to these elements, the power dynamics between them and their relations to the material realities of target audiences. It concludes that the narratives from different countries are strikingly convergent and that the main axes of division lie in their assessment of the EGD itself, not their origin.

The results not only complement a large body of related research, but also reveal new issues of both theoretical and practical significance. The paper highlights the challenge that anti-EGD narratives pose to mainstream implementations of environmental policies and the necessity of engaging in actual dialogue instead of isolated storytelling rivalry.