Moralization of Politics and Violent Partisan Hostility on Social Media

• In Event: Negative Partisanship, Affective Polarization, and Partisan Hostility

Abstract

Contemporary American partisans are increasingly radical with a substantial minority from both parties viewing the use of violence against opposing partisans as legitimate. In parallel, social media is blamed for stimulating violent partisanship reflecting and even deteriorating violent partisan hostility offline. In this paper, I explore why social media users express violent partisan hostility, abusing and threatening opposing partisans, focused on Twitter. Focusing on opinion leadership, I claim that political elites moralize contentious political issues to bolster their core support base and draw attention, although this leads to violent partisan expressions by evoking partisan outrage. I test several implications of this theory using tweets from the 117th Congress and replies to them. Preliminary analysis shows that moralized political issues are more likely to received abusive and violent replies and get outsized attention.

Author

• Taegyoon Kim, Northwestern University