Media Effects on Perceptions of Social Cohesion in Society

The second speaker in this panel at ECREA PolCom 2023 conference is Christine Meltzer, whose focus is on the perception of social cohesion in society, and its relationship with media use. Such cohesion is critical as it plays a crucial role in societies’ responses to crises.

Media use can contribute to perceived social cohesion in society if people consume the same media, if such media content supports some level of social cohesion and shared experience, and supports trust and tolerance. Such media often tend to be high-quality rather than alternative and hyperpartisan media.

How is media use associated with social cohesion in society? This paper builds on the same dataset as the previous presentation, which also asked questions about people’s perceptions of social cohesion in their own country, as well as about their news avoidance and selective exposure practices.

Northern Europeans perceived their countries as significantly more cohesive than other Europeans; however, overall ratings for all countries were slightly below neutral: no national communities felt that their countries were especially cohesive in general. Use of specific media had only minor effects: slightly positive for TV, and slightly negative for social media and news aggregators. News avoidance and selective avoidance were both negatively associated with perceptions of social cohesion (and both of these practices varied somewhat also across specific countries, too). This does not imply a causal relationship in either direction, though.