Energized? How German and Italian Party Actors Used Emotions in Energy Policy Narratives During the 2024 EU Elections

ABSTRACT Energy transitions pose wicked policy problems that trigger strong public responses, shaped by how emotions are used in policy communication. Within the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), policy actors leverage emotionally charged narratives to influence public opinion and policy processes. This article explores the emotional dimensions of policy communication during the 2024 European Parliament elections, a critical period for energy policy. Amidst the rise of far‐right parties, we investigate how party actors in Germany and Italy narrated energy issues and used emotionalization strategies. Using a novel dataset of Instagram posts, we combine computational dictionary‐based and qualitative content analysis to trace emotions in energy policy narratives ( N = 253). Our study extends the use of novel emotion dictionaries within the NPF to the European policy context and multilingual social‐media data. Findings reveal that emotions tend to be mixed within policy narratives. While “affinity” and “compassion” are emphasized, emotion types differ notably between parties.