Polarisation

Up next in this AoIR 2024 conference panel is my QUT colleague Daniel Whelan-Shamy, with whom I’ll present our paper on polarisation on Indigenous debates in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. In both countries there is a long and complex history of colonial oppression towards their respective Indigenous peoples. In Australia, the 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum sought to remedy this through the constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples, while in New Zealand the Treaty of Waitangi was signed as early as 1840 and gradually led to greater recognition and rights for Māori groups. Our work examines the patterns of potentially …

The next speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is the excellent Laura Iannelli, whose focus is on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Italy was amongst the first countries in the world to implement a mass lockdown, and this became an arena for polarised conflict amongst political elites. The question here is whether this also fostered societal and individual polarisation, and what role mis- and disinformation played in this process.

Elite polarisation can lead mass polarisation, although crises can also produce a ‘rally around the flag’ phenomenon that reduces polarisation. This offers two contrasting scenarios, of more …

The next session at the AoIR 2024 conference conference is a session that I co-organised which focusses on controversies, and starts with a presentation by Felipe Soares. His focus is on the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, which finally brought the reign of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to an end. The election was beset by the dissemination of disinformation on social media, especially about the integrity of the electoral process, and this also led to calls for military intervention in the political system, and coup attempt by Bolsonaro supporters in Brasilia on 8 January 2022.

What is difficult here is that …

The next speaker in this AoIR 2024 conference session is Luigi Arminio, whose interest is in the sociolinguistic patterns of polarisation on climate change on Facebook (this approach carries on from the previous presentation). Such patterns may also represent socioeconomic differences: people with lower socioeconomic status tend to be more open to climate change-denialist rhetoric, and such groups also differ from others in their overall communication styles. Can such differences be identified in climate discourse, marking the proponents and opponents of climate activism? Do they influence audience responses?

The project compiled some 10,000 posts from 250 public pro- and anti-climate …

Up next in this AoIR 2024 conference session is the great Luca Rossi, whose interest is in visual communication strategies in climate change debates. Online debate on these topics tends to be highly polarised between those who do and do not accept the scientific consensus on climate change; it is also difficult to discuss in the abstract, so that visual representations become especially important in these debates.

How do specific images feed into the political narrative on climate change, then: are they used to debate objective facts (e.g. through data visualisations), or in a more polarising way to represent group …

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is João Gonçalves, whose interest is in polarisation in the content recommended by YouTube in the Netherlands. This focusses especially on affective polarisation, on labelling of out-groups as extremist, and on a lack of discursive crossover between polarised opponents.

Past research on polarisation has shown a substantial role for non-news Websites; investigating YouTube recommendations is therefore especially important. A key distinction introduced in the present study is between content recommendations around established and non-established parties; additionally, the study also explored content recommendations specifically around right-wing parties.

The project selected five seed videos …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Remzie Shahini-Hoxhaj, whose interest is in visual affective polarisation on Instagram, focussing on political parties that promote extreme or radical right-wing views. Social media algorithms might in fact actively promote and amplify such content, but fostering in-group favouritism and out-group hostility.

This study examined the distinct visual framing strategies of far-right political parties in Europe. Such parties tend to emphasise their own distinct identities; use euphoric language for in-group identification and dysphoric language for out-groups; and include nationalist and historical symbols to appeal to their audiences. The study focussed on France …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Petro Tolochko, whose focus is on affective polarisation in climate activism visuals. Such content can be highly affective in climate activist communication, spark audience reactions, and spread online to promote the emergence of like-minded or opposing groups. The analysis here might include aspects of structural polarisation (using network analysis) and reactionary polarisation (using communication analysis).

An initial question might thus be which types of images lead to increased polarisation online; more recently, however, with the shift from Xitter to TikTok the role of videos in such activist communication has grown. Polarisation …

For the next session at ECREA 2024 I am once again in a session on polarisation, and we start with a double-header presentation by Quirin Ryffel and Nayla Fawzi. They begin with an overview of polarisation patterns in German – here, as in many other European countries, there is no simplistic left/right polarisation as there is in the US, but more usually polarisation on specific issues. One of these is environmental policy.

There is broad consensus on the science of climate change and the need for action in Germany; however, there are also strong perceptions of polarisation between groups who …

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Dominika Betakova, whose interest is in news avoidance – a growing pattern around the world. Such news avoidance is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, though: it may be intentional, or may simply represent a low level of news consumption – and the people who engage in one or the other practice are not necessarily the same.

Intentional news avoidance may be temporal (e.g. during the COVID-19 pandemic), and can lead to better mental health; it can also be related to greater adherence to misbeliefs, a lack of political knowledge, and less political participation …