Affective Polarization, Social Media News and Political Persuasion

• In Event: (De)Polarization?

Abstract

Prior research underscores the utility of political persuasion to sustain more deliberative and engaged democracies. When citizens display increased openness to political attitude change, societies benefit as diverse viewpoints thrive, and a more consensual public sphere may be fostered. This vision of democratic society often seems to be in contrast with today’s contentious political and media environment. With political affective polarization on the rise and new social media avenues providing citizens with the ability to curate more diverse news consumption patterns, little is known about how affective polarization affects the ability for citizens to be politically persuaded in social media environments. In this paper, we attempt to better understand why and how individuals change their mind when exposed to views different from their own in social media contexts by focusing on one factor that we believe inhibits the likelihood of social media political persuasion (SMPP) – that of affective polarization. Following the research on affective polarization and motivated reasoning, we argue that the psychological attachment associated with the latter will make persuasion much less likely. We therefore expect those who show higher levels of affective polarization to be more likely to immediately reject or engage in biased processing of new information they encounter, negatively affecting SMPP. Using original data collected from a two-wave panel survey conducted on a representative sample of the United States population, we employ three consecutive ordinary least squares (OLS) models to test our hypotheses: cross-sectional, lagged, and over-time causal order (autoregressive). The results of these analyses show that individuals who consume more news on social media and exhibit lower levels of political affective polarization tend to more frequently engage in political attitude change. These findings therefore confirm previous research that exposure to news and public affairs information on social media leads people to change their opinion about political matters, and adds to this discussion by finding that individuals who are more affectively polarized are less likely to be persuaded to change their minds on political matters based on the information they encounter on social media. While social media provides ample opportunities for political persuasion through diversity of information and interactions, the intra-group antagonism that results from affective polarization appears to minimize the effect of SMPP in such contexts. As scholars have noted the increasing prevalence of affective polarization, the ineffectiveness of political persuasion in the presence of such attachments has important implications for our understanding of the effects of social media in contemporary democracies. The theoretical implications of the findings, possible limitations of the study, and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Authors

• Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Salamanca / Pennsylvania State University

• Hugo Marcos-Marne

• Emily B Carty, University of Salamanca