Affective Polarization and the Hybrid Media System during the Pandemic in Italy

• In Event: Digital Information Flows and Politics in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Affective polarization (AP) arises when citizens develop negative sentiments towards their political opponents (fellow citizens, political leaders, and political parties). While AP has been mainly conceived as a threat to the proper functioning of the democratic game, some studies argued that strong political feelings may also have a positive effect on the legitimacy of the political systems, by fostering citizens’ active engagement in political affairs.
The Covid-19 pandemic has represented a strong exogenous shock which upset people’ everyday life and contemporary representative democracies across the globe. Especially during 2020 (when the pandemic hit Europe), citizens experienced the first mass lockdowns which led to systemic economic instability. In such situation, media diets and experiences, as well as citizens’ concerns related to their economic situation, could have been subjected to relevant modifications.
The present study is aimed at understanding whether and how, during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, transformations in the way citizens inhabit contemporary hybrid media systems impacted their levels of AP, and whether an increased perception of economic uncertainty affected such relation.
To answer these research interrogatives, we employ a three-wave panel survey administered to a representative sample of Italian adult internet users between May and December 2020 (Wave 1 N=1,563 with a 77% retention rate across the study). We run fixed-effects models predicting differences within individuals in levels of AP, measured as an index combining spreads of like-dislike scores assigned by respondents to all main parties, leaders, and partisans.
Our findings show that increased political information and discussion in different realms of the hybrid media systems (face-to-face, mass media, social media, and mobile instant messaging platforms), as well as engagement with political content on social media, boost AP in different and specific ways. We also find that increased sense of economic uncertainty is directly associated with reduced AP, while its interaction with some media experiences boosts AP. The study offers new and relevant nuances on our understanding on how AP emerges in contemporary hybrid media systems and, more specifically, on how the pandemic experience has impacted an increasingly problematic phenomenon for democratic life.

Authors

• Augusto Valeriani, Università di Bologna

• Mario Quaranta, University of Trento

• Danilo Serani, Università di Bologna