GCRD Publishes New Study on UK Public Discourse
GCRD News · 13 October 2026
Democracy Discourse Index · United Kingdom
Let’s Bring Back Hope, Part 2
Four in five replies to the Prime Minister’s hope video fall in the Risk band, GCRD study finds
Scoring 12,139 public replies to Andy Burnham’s “What Hope Means” video, new research from the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy finds a reply that is civil but closed, and a public that has taken the word hope back and redefined it, most often as a general election.
GCRD News · 13 October 2026 · Research by Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob
- 12,139
- public comments scored on four platforms
- 14.7 /100
- mean Democracy Discourse Index score
- 79.7%
- of replies in the Risk band; 20 reached Healthy
- 36% vs 9%
- restraint against generative indicators
News
London, 13 October 2026. Nearly four in five public replies to Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s “What Hope Means” video fall in the Risk band of the Democracy Discourse Index, according to new research published today by the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD), which scored 12,139 comments posted on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and X in the weeks after the video appeared on 6 August.
The study, the second part of GCRD’s Let’s Bring Back Hope series, finds that the Prime Minister’s attempt to explain what he meant by his call to “bring back hope” landed on much the same ground as the call itself. The mean score across the reply was 14.7 out of 100, only 20 comments reached the Healthy band, and the overall picture closely resembles the one GCRD recorded in July, when Part 1 examined the reception of his first speech as Prime Minister.
Civil, but closed
Most of the reply was not abusive. Commenters largely refrained from dehumanising and conspiratorial language, with the four restraint indicators averaging 36 per cent of their maximum, yet they seldom offered the perspective-taking, solidarity, good faith or call to action that the sixteen generative indicators measure, which averaged only 9 per cent, and more than one comment in four showed no generative trace at all.
“Citizens were largely willing not to dehumanise the Prime Minister. They were rarely willing to imagine his position, or one another’s,” writes Dr Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob, GCRD’s Founding Executive Director and the author of the report.
Hope, redefined as an election
The public also took the word back. Of the 2,796 comments that use the word hope, one in five denies that there is any, while another fifth redefines it, most often as a general election, the removal of the government, control of the borders or relief on the cost of living. The most-replied-to comment in the entire corpus, drawing 377 replies, was itself such a redefinition: “Hope is a General Election and a Reform Government”.
The report cautions against dismissing these demands as noise. A call for an election may be hostile to the messenger, it argues, but it remains faithful to the mechanism, and it is one of the few places in the reply where democratic agency appears at all. The circumstances of the video also became part of its message, with 349 comments raising the Prime Minister’s holiday, 78 noticing that the podcast microphone in front of him read “How to Fail”, and 50 objecting to the music.
X at the bottom, Instagram at the top
The four platforms again proved to be distinct grounds. Instagram (24.5) and TikTok (18.4) scored well above Facebook (12.8) and X (11.9), an ordering that survives when comments of similar length are compared; on X almost half of the reply fell into the Hostile profile, whereas on Instagram more than a quarter was Constructive. Across every platform, the strongest comments came from people speaking out of a particular situation: a mental health crisis worker, a teacher, a parent explaining to a stranger how they got their son seen sooner.
“A leader can clarify a word. He cannot, by clarification alone, change the condition in which the word is heard.”
Let’s Bring Back Hope, Part 2: What Hope Means to the Public, GCRD, October 2026
Why it matters
GCRD’s vision is a democracy in which citizens can engage with renewed hope. Anti-democratic forces prefer an atmosphere of hopelessness, and they cultivate it through a public discourse of hopelessness, which is why GCRD treats hopelessness as a critical democratic vulnerability and hope, where it can take root, as a democratic force multiplier.
In GCRD’s framing, misinformation is the match, but the state of the forest decides whether a fire catches, and Part 2 measures the forest. The report closes with seven implications for government, political communicators and the platforms, among them answering the citizens who bring specific cases and proposals, making hope checkable through commitments the public can audit, and engaging directly with the demand for consent. “Hope comes back where people are heard,” it concludes, “and where what they are promised can be seen.”
Read the study
The research is published in three companion parts that draw on the same scored comments: the full report, with its findings and its implications for policy and leadership; the Discourse Map, an interactive tool that places every comment on the map and was built for students, researchers and policy readers to explore and teach with; and the lexical appendix, which sets out the words the public used by platform, reception profile and DDI band.
The report, the map and the words
Three companion publications drawn from the same 12,139 scored comments, each a different way into the findings.
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The report
What Hope Means to the Public
The analytical report: findings, interpretation, and implications for policy and leadership.
- Seven key findings, from the low ground to the particular voice
- Five ways the public answered hope
- Implications for policy and leadership
- Methods, limits and data, in full
14.7mean score out of 100, across 12,139 replies
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The interactive map
The Discourse Map
Every scored comment on the map, with a guided reading, a comparison tool and seminar exercises.
- Every reply placed by its scores on the twenty indicators
- An eleven-stop guided reading
- A comparison tool across platforms and profiles
- Six seminar exercises with ready-made views
12,139comments, each a position on the map
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The lexical appendix
The Vocabulary of the Reply
The words the public used, by platform, reception profile and DDI band.
- Seven readings of the public’s vocabulary
- 13,227 different content words
- “General election” in 617 comments
- Word clouds by platform, profile and band
2,668comments use the word hope
