Work package one sets the tone for the whole project by developing the project's conceptual and methodological framework. It is composed of one representative from each of the participating institutions (including the leaders of all academic work packages) and will be active predominantly (though not exclusively) in the first six months of the project. During this time, under the leadership of the project's Principal Investigator, the work package will generate an ideal-typical definition as well as an operationalization and empirical indicators for the analysis of post-truth politics.

In these first six months of the project, WP1 will also finalize the overarching methodological approach of the project, specifically with regard to training the other work package leaders about the temporal axis of the project, i.e., the three phases that need to be incorporated in all work packages so as to ensure the production of comparable research results: a conceptual methodological phase, an empirical-analytical phase, and a critical-advisory phase.

Given the composition of the work package, WP1 will also serve as a link and permanent communication channel between the project leadership and the individual academic work packages. In the remaining two and a half years of the project, the work package will play a crucial role in providing intellectual leadership for the whole project and being responsible for ensuring the methodology coherence of the whole project. During this time, the WP's most important role will be monitoring the progress of the other academic work packages in relation to achieving the project's research outputs in all three projects phases.