Interconnections between Problematic Information and Polarisation

And the final speaker in this session at the P³: Power, Propaganda, Polarisation ICA 2024 postconference is the fabulous Giada Marino, presenting outcomes from the Italian I-POLHYS project led by Laura Iannelli which researched polarisation in hybrid media’s systems. A key focus of the project was on the potential interconnections between problematic information and mass polarisation; it began with a systematic literature review on these connections, which focussed on some 68 relevant articles (out of a much larger number that used these terms as buzzwords but did not operationalise them in any rigorous way, or confused them with other concepts).

Most of these studies were empirical, US-centric, quantitative, and lacked a longitudinal perspective; most identified positive associations between political polarisation and problematic information, where hyperpartisanship was found to lead to the belief in and sharing of ‘fake news’, or ‘fake news’ consumption could lead to support for extremist parties.

This work then formed the basis for I-POLHYS’s own empirical work, conducted especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, policy preferences for responding to the pandemic differed considerably between government and opposition, and the project studied the impact of news reliability perceptions on individuals’ levels of issue polarisation. Drawing on a representative longitudinal survey, it found that the likelihood of extreme libertarian positions increased over time for those who distrusted conventional but trusted digital and social media sources, the opposite was true for those who distrusted social media as news sources.

A second study examined how ideological extremism affected the sharing of ‘fake news’ content, and found that Italians with far-right views were more likely to share misinformation on instant messaging, while far-left individuals were more likely to correct misinformation on social media and verify news on instant messaging.

Further work is now examining the effects of ‘news-finds-me’ perceptions and political knowledge on misinformation sharing on social media and instant messaging; and the role of ideological extremism in moderating these effects. Left-wing views appear to increase the effects of higher political knowledge on the reduction of misinformation sharing, while right-wing extremism appears to neutralise any effects of higher political on misinformation sharing. Right-wing extremists thus appear to share misinformation despite their knowledge that such content is incorrect.