Polarisation

We continue this second day of the ECREA 2024 conference with the second conference keynote, by Jelena Kleut. Her focus is on uncertainties in transitional media systems. She begins by noting the various present-day communicative disorders – disinformation, political dysfunction, hate speech and abuse, etc. – but also warns us not to lose track of the positive potentials of contemporary communication technologies amongst all the doom and gloom. A balanced assessment of the current situation remains critical.

This points to a considerable level of uncertainty, too – and this can be generative (of research, and of overall progress for society), but equally also produce social and societal anxieties that lead citizens to seek easy answers and solutions. Jelena’s focus here is on the countries of the western Balkans, which have been described as ‘transitional democracies’ for the past 30 years at least; here, too, uncertainties persist, and may be divided into top-down, structurally driven uncertainties and bottom-up, audience-driven uncertainties.

These are reflected for instance in mainstream media reporting approaches, and the dissemination of disinformation that surrounds or responds to this reporting. Why does such disinformation circulate? At the structural, top-down level we have been seeing the rise of a politics of uncertainty, used as a tool by autocrats and illiberal forces to shore up their systems of electoral authoritarianism. This connects with the capture of state and societal institutions by such political actors, which makes the actions of these institutions themselves uncertain and unreliable as they are no longer based on the rule of law and democratic foundations. Such electoral authoritarian governments also control access to information, therefore.

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Dennis Andersson, whose interest is in the effect of ideological news use in Sweden. The observation that people hold diametrically opposed beliefs about where society is heading is not new, and predates online and social media use; education and other socioeconomic factors, as well as news media use, are often seen as factors in influencing citizens’ belief structures.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Nuri Sadida, whose focus is on the impact of ‘fake news’ and media literacy on affective polarisation in Indonesia. Such affective polarisation has increased in Indonesia over the past ten years, especially in the context of elections; derogatory nicknames for out-groups, such as ‘tadpole’ or ‘desert lizard’, are common especially in social media conversations.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Emma Turkenburg, who begins by highlighting growing concerns about affective polarisation. The worry here is that such polarisation has social as well as political consequences, yet the evidence for such political consequences is mixed; the growth and decline of polarisation in specific societies is highly context-bound and dynamic.

The next speakers in this ECREA 2024 session are Tomasz Gackowski and his colleague whose name I did not catch; they begin by pointing to the considerable volume of research on social polarisation, and are especially interested in how such dynamics play out in Poland. They worked with a politically representative sample of residents in a major city in Poland, who were confronted with a range of anonymised quotations from politicians about the situation in Poland and Europe.

The second day at ECREA 2024 starts with yet another panel on polarisation, with begins with a paper by Diógenes Lycarião. His interest is in testing the hypothesis that digitalisation and platformisation are fragmenting the public sphere. This is critical since much of the scholarly discussion on this public sphere fragmentation hypothesis to date builds on unverified assumptions.

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Mikkel Bækby Johansen, whose interest is in hybridisation of extremism on social media. Hybridisation is a term which has emerged from terrorism studies, pointing to the increasingly complex nature of terrorist threats; however, the role of social media in such hybridisation remains poorly understood.

Up next in this ECREA 2024 session is the excellent Giovanni Boccia Artieri, whose interest is in networking between fringe Telegram channels in Italy. These are connected to disinformation ecosystems, the spread of conspiracy theories, and the normalisation of populism and political extremism. Fringe online spaces can especially serve as laboratories for extremist narratives here – even though they can also provide a safe space for marginalised and disadvantaged communities.

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 on polarisation is Michael Brüggemann, whose interest is in normative perspectives on polarisation. These stem largely from the two normative traditions of the Habermasian public sphere, where issue and ideological polarisation is not a problem if it can be resolved through rational debate and democratic listening; and Chantal Mouffe’s concept of agonistic pluralism, where transparency in conflicts and political mobilisation are central and polarisation can be a useful motivator for passionate and divisive (but not inimical) communication.

Up next in the session at ECREA 2024 is Christel van Eck, whose focus is on how we understand the concept of depolarisation. Her project conducted a systematic literature review of the (de)polarisation literature, eventually identifying some 89 relevant articles from a much larger list of work that somehow mentions the concept. It coded these for a number of features, including conceptual, analytical, and methodological factors and the evidence base provided.