Understanding the Evaluation Process

Proposals for HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-05 are evaluated against three standard Horizon Europe criteria. To succeed, you must excel in all three areas, with a specific focus on how your project addresses the unique demands of this call.

1. Excellence

This criterion assesses the core scientific and innovative quality of your proposal.

* Clarity and Pertinence of Objectives: Are your objectives ambitious, measurable, and directly aligned with the scope of the call? Do they clearly address the challenge of radicalisation, extremism, and polarisation?

* Soundness of the Concept and Methodology: Your methodology must be robust and well-justified. This includes:

* Interdisciplinarity: A convincing integration of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) with data science, media studies, and other relevant fields.

* Innovative Approach: You must demonstrate how your project goes beyond the state-of-the-art. This includes the required historical and comparative analysis and the investigation of both online and offline networks.

* Gender and Intersectional Analysis: The call mentions hate speech against women and vulnerable groups. Your methodology should incorporate a strong gender and intersectional dimension.

2. Impact

This criterion evaluates the potential real-world effects of your project. It is arguably the most important criterion for this call.

* Credibility of Pathways to Impact: You must provide a detailed and convincing plan to achieve the Expected Outcomes listed in the call. Clearly map your project's results to each of the three mandatory outcomes and the additional outcome(s) you have chosen.

* Measures to Maximise Impact: This is about your strategy for Dissemination, Exploitation, and Communication (DEC). A strong proposal will feature:

* A detailed plan for engaging with the Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) and other relevant EU bodies.

* A clear strategy for producing outputs tailored to diverse end-users (policymakers, CSOs, educators in your country, media).

* A commitment to open science principles, ensuring data is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable).

3. Quality and Efficiency of the Implementation

This criterion assesses your ability to successfully execute the project.

* Work Plan and Resources: The work plan must be coherent, effective, and well-structured into work packages. As this is a Lump Sum grant, the detailed budget table must clearly justify the resources allocated to each work package.

* Consortium Composition: The consortium must possess the necessary collective expertise. Evaluators will check for the mandatory inclusion of diverse stakeholders (academics, CSOs, media, etc.) and a balanced partnership from different regions, including your country.

* Management and Risk Assessment: You need clear management structures, decision-making processes, and a realistic assessment of potential risks (e.g., challenges in data access from platforms) with credible mitigation strategies.

Crafting a Winning Proposal for HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-05

1. Frame Your Proposal Around the Core EU Challenge

Start by explicitly acknowledging the grant's context: radicalisation, extremism, and hate speech are presented as direct threats to EU democracy and social cohesion. Use the language of the call and reference key EU policy documents like the Joint Communication 'No Place for Hate'. Your proposal should be positioned not just as a research project, but as a strategic intervention to safeguard European values.

2. Build a Transdisciplinary, Multi-Stakeholder Consortium

This is a Research and Innovation Action (RIA), but the emphasis is heavily on impact and uptake. A purely academic consortium will fail. Your team must be a credible mix of:

* Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) Researchers: To provide theoretical depth, historical context, and qualitative analysis.

* Data Scientists/Tech Experts: For quantitative analysis of online hate ecosystems, algorithm impacts, and developing tools.

* Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) & NGOs: To provide on-the-ground access to communities, test interventions, and ensure real-world relevance. Their involvement is required.

* Media Organisations & Journalists: To offer insights into media consumption, combat disinformation, and act as a key channel for dissemination.

* Educational Bodies: To co-design and pilot training materials for students and educators.

* Policymakers/Public Bodies: To guide the research towards policy-relevant outputs and facilitate uptake.

* Private Entities: The call encourages involving providers of intermediary services (e.g., social media platforms) for data access, which is a significant advantage.

3. Explicitly Address All Mandatory Outcomes

Structure your proposal's work packages to clearly demonstrate how you will achieve all three of the mandatory expected outcomes. Use headings in your proposal that mirror the outcome descriptions. Then, clearly select and justify which of the additional outcomes your project will tackle, ensuring your methodology and team are suited for it.

4. Go Beyond the Screen: Integrate Online and Offline Analysis

The call text explicitly warns against focusing solely on social media. A winning strategy will propose a sophisticated methodology that investigates the interplay between online 'echo chambers' and offline social networks (e.g., family, community groups, kinships). This demonstrates a nuanced understanding of the problem.

5. Embed Historical and Comparative Analysis

Dedicate a specific work package or task to the historical and comparative analysis requested in the call. Show how you will analyze the evolution of hate speech and extremist narratives over time and across different national contexts within the EU. This adds depth and demonstrates you have read the call carefully.

6. Create a Concrete Collaboration and Dissemination Plan

Your proposal must go beyond generic promises. Detail how you will collaborate with the EU Knowledge Hub on radicalisation prevention (RAN). Name specific activities, such as joint workshops or developing advisory services. Similarly, outline a plan for clustering with other successful projects under this topic. For dissemination, create a matrix showing specific outputs tailored to each stakeholder group (e.g., policy briefs for policymakers, toolkits for journalists, lesson plans for educators).