ECREA 2024

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 next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Azade Kakavand, whose interest is in mapping far-right voices across platforms. This is methodologically difficult, and requires a matching of user identities across platforms – especially also because far-right actors are well-known for using multiple platforms for a variety of distinct purposes.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Aytalina Kulichkina, whose focus is on the role of social media in authoritarian settings. Social media have been prominent for protests in such contexts, but have also been used by regimes to suppress and undermine protests as well as to identify protesters. The picture remains blurry due to the many contextual differences, the various platforms used, changes over time, and other differing factors, however.

The next ECREA 2024 session is also on polarisation, and I’m chairing as well as blogging it. We start with Petra de Place Bak, whose interest is in the cognitive preferences that make specific types of online content more salient and shareable. One aspect of this might be sentiment- and emotion-based biases.

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.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Shota Gelovani, who shifts our discussion further to the theme of democratic listening: the scrutiny and constructive discussion of statements by other citizens in a democracy. This can happen also between dissenting individuals, and may lead, if not to the removal of differences, then at least to partial consensus and an enlightened dissent.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Matthias Revers, who continues our focus on polarisation in climate communication. The project sent out a recruitment survey in Germany and the UK to recruit participants with divergent views on climate change, then organised some 40 conversations on Zoom between participants with opposing views, and examined whether such conversations entrenched or weakened disagreements and antipathy between viewpoints.