The third speaker in this session at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen is Michael Brüggemann, whose focus is on the role of journalism in fuelling discursive polarisation. He begins by referencing controversial public debates about radical climate protests, which usually evidence some level of discursive polarisation. Such polarisation may be ideological and/or affective, and and become destructive for public debate.
This contrasts with democratic transformative communication, which enables societies to address such conflicts productively. Literature has identified a number of factors that may polarise or depolarise; interestingly, exposure to dissonant views is often seen as polarising, but this cannot mean that journalistic reporting should avoid exposing its audiences to diverse perspectives, of course.
Journalism can polarise by underreporting consensus, amplifying toxic interactions, focussing on populist actors, depicting antagonising groups, binary reporting of complex conflicts, focus on problems, and other approaches; its reporting on polarisation in society also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if it creates the perception of a highly polarised society, of course.
And there is an ‘anger premium’ in polarisation discourses: reporting on polarisation tends to contain more angry language, and can lead to greater divisions between in- and out-group perceptions and an adoption of more extreme political positions amongst audiences – i.e. result in an increase in both affective and ideological polarisation. This also affects the willingness of such audiences to support members of the out-group socially or financially.
Reporting on radical climate protests in Germany tends to favour extremely negative voices, and tends to be fairly angry in tone; this follows key journalistic routines and logics, but also fuels polarisation. There are no simple solutions to this, and indeed some depolarisation measures (such as ignoring certain political actors and views) tend not to be desirable.
