Reviewing the Evidence on Cross-Cutting Exposure and (De)polarisation

The next presenter at the ICA 2024 conference is Biying Wu-Ouyang, presenting a systematic review of research on cross-cutting exposure. Social media users are constantly exposed to cross-cutting views, and this can increase information exposure and thus depolarise opinions, but also increase polarisation by confronting them with out-group perspectives; there may also be no effect whatsoever.

What exactly happens here depends on a range of factors – such as sources, modality, or intentions of the cross-cutting exposure. Other attributes (measurement, design and sampling strategies, and local contexts) may also affect the results of individual studies.

The present study is reviewing some 63 articles to explore these factors. Articles since 2010 were considered, and the volume of articles grew substantially in more recent years. Some 70% of these articles cover the unique political system of the United States, and articles are mainly by male authors. Some 31% of studies found direct depolarising effects from cross-cutting exposure, mostly based on cross-sectional surveys; 42% found no direct effects whatsoever, and these mainly conducted panel surveys, experiments, and quasi-experimental computational analyses.

Modality (online or offline) did not make a difference, but there were some differences in studies’ findings when they focussed on candidate polarisation (mostly depolarising) and party or issue polarisation (no effect). This literature review is still a work in progress, however, and more publications have yet to be added to the analysis.