Polarization on Social Media and Beyond: A Comparative Study of how Social Media Influence Inter-Group Attitudes
Year: 2022
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Digital media have changed the way we think about politics. The social media age has brought a new understanding of political participation: individuals now engage in politics by receiving, sharing, interacting with, and commenting on online political information. It has demonstrated beneficial consequences: broader accessibility of political participation, easiness of staying up to date about political developments, and facilitated interpersonal communication. However, the division into groups of like-minded individuals has been regarded as one of the risks of online communication. Receiving and sharing political information in such groups can be associated with a growing polarization of the public. Against this background, we also observe that the electorate has increasingly sorted itself along the party lines by other, presumably non-political characteristics, such as ethnicity. This dissertation explores whether using social media is associated with changes in polarization, controlling for confounding factors such as the frequency of cross-cutting discussions, contact with out-groups, political ideology, and demographic indicators. Building upon the logic of group identity, it draws parallels between affective polarization and ethnic polarization, or ethnocentrism. Employing Gordon Allport’s contact theory as the main framework, the dissertation argues that more frequent contact between political and ethnic in-groups and out-groups is associated with improved attitudes or lower polarization. By focusing on the cases of the United States, Germany, and Georgia, it also attempts to pave the way for future research to explore country-level differences despite significant hurdles associated with data availability and comparability.
Language: German
Topic: Social Media and Politics
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7005263771