And the next speaker in this session at the 2026 International Communication Association conference in Cape Town is Henri Mütschele, who continues our focus on polarisation around climate movements. Polarisation research in the social sciences is still lacking in various ways: the role of media, the motives of individuals, the implications for social groups, and the impact on these groups strategic communication all still require further research, and such work is often focussed solely on explaining opinion change through conformity.
The law of group polarisation suggests that members of a deliberating group predictably move forwards a more extreme point indicated by the members’ pre-deliberation tendencies; this is explained by processes of social comparison and influence, which leads to an adaptation to the perceived majority opinion, and persuasion due to biased argument repertoires, which results in enclave deliberation. Both represent conformity mechanisms.
This is all about the extremisation of whole groups, even though polarisation also takes place within groups – polarisation is usually designed as an inter-group phenomenon, as opposed to intro-group conformity. But what mechanisms cause non-confirming opinion formation processes? What is the role of deviance and dissent towards in-group norms here?
Optimal distinctiveness theory might be useful here. Why do people join groups at all? Most likely because they seek an optimal balance between inclusion and differentiation through group identification, which enables them to maintain a stable self-concept.
If a new group message indicates a shift in the group’s position, people can choose to either conform to or deviate from this; this might generate group polarisation and even lead to group splits. Such processes are likely to result from a sustained series of such small-scale decisions over time, of course. They are likely to be mediated by various independent factors: the position of members within groups, their ideological positioning within the group, and involvement with the topics under discussion, as well as broader group-level factors.
Distinctions between the Fridays for Future and Last Generation climate action groups are useful here: they have different levels of power concentration, different levels of personalisation, and different portrayals in the news media. Empirical research on such cases needs to include more media sources to understand their strategic communication approaches, then; more relational indicators that point to potential opinion changes, and social identity mechanisms.
