Prof. Dr. Christiane Eilders
Input CE for international conference „Defending Democracy and Human Rights“, Skopje, Dec 11-12, 2024.
You picked a very relevant topic for the conference. We are currently witnessing several wars and conflicts in the world, and even in Europe. They are very likely to disturb and disrupt democratic processes – even in countries, outside of the immediate war zones, such as Germany or North Macedonia. They divide societies into camps of supporters and opponents of Ukraine, or of Israel. But also think of less severe conflicts on domestic policies such as taxes, covid or migration. They also have the potential to polarize society.
What´s so bad about opposing opinions – isn´t that just pluralism? When we see distinct and strong opinions and there are strong feelings involved, a conflict can threaten democratic governance because it might develop into a standstill of discursive exchange – and that is needed for democratic opinion formation and decision-making. Discourse is a prerequisite of democracy.
The exchange of opinions can take place in person, but mostly it is via the media – including both journalistic and social media. And the question is: how does mediated public communication drive or deepen conflicts, or how does it ease conflicts and bring people together? What is the role of media in putting democracies under stress – or in stabilizing them? It is important to note that media used to be regarded a democratic infrastructure for a country. The fact that that is no longer always the case it already alarming.
I would like to start with the very popular diagnosis of the crisis of political communication. Two of the most respected scholars in political communication, Jay Blumler and Michael Gurevitch had coined the term in 1995. They concentrated on role definitions of politicians and media on one side and citizens on the other side, on norms and structures, which affect the relations between those groups, and on political culture. Blumler identified four ages of political communication and showed how the democratic functions of communication deteriorated over time. In the third age, he identified five main trends, which already show a decline: intensified professionalizing pressures; increased competitive pressures; anti-elitist populism; centrifugal diversification; and changes in how people receive politics. With these few observations, it is obvious that not everything was good before the prevalence of online communication.
We are now in the fourth age and that is the age of online communication and social media in particular. Everything became even more pronounced plus there is a linkage between social media and journalism. Media content reaches audiences via personal networks. This is a chance for more emotions and for more effects on opinion formation due to trust in like-minded peers through whom people encounter news. This might give rise to polarization, but (in Germany anyways) there is little evidence of polarization thru social media.
So why worry? It can change and it is different in other countries – such as the US to name only one case. We still don´t know how opinions in media content and in social media lead to increasing ideological gaps between groups. That would be ideological polarization and we expect it is through different exposure patterns and pre-existing opinions that some individuals turn to one side and others turn to the other side of a spectrum. There is still a lot of work to do to clarify how social media drives ideological polarization.
However, the drivers for affective polarization are studied a bit better. Affective polarization is an emotional devaluation and rejection of an outgroup, for instance an opposing camp. Social media can foster this rejection because it relies on emotions and and promotes outrage. This is how it keeps people on the platform. In networked publics, like-minded peers are likely to build an ingroup and identify common opponents. The discursive reactions between the groups are regarded as affective polarization.
The emotional rejection of a group indicates a lack of willingness to compromise on political issues. It makes discourse across opinion camps more difficult. But this is how democracies work. We have to interact, compromise and find solutions. This interaction contributes to integration and thereby stabilizes the foundations of democratic societies.
Now: How do we depolarize society if we are already split up into opposing camps? Of, course media education and media competence helps a lot if disinformation is the cause of polarization. But sometimes a society polarizes even without disinformation. So what can we do? There is a lot of research on the effects of moderation in discourses – by humans or bots, and there are findings on the effects of crosscutting exposure, which means encountering opposing opinions or counterarguments. Unfortunately, these findings are inconclusive, totally contradictory. We yet don´t know under which conditions someone changes his or her opinion when encountering other opinions. Sometimes the presentation of opposing opinions drives people even more toward the extremes of their existing opinions.
I would recommend trying it out! On different issues, with different groups, in different formats. We need more experience and best practice cases to give orientation in this unmapped territory. It is worth it, it is important; we have to prevent disintegration and polarization because it threatens democratic decision-making. Sooner or later, we will better understand the mechanisms of social media influence on opinion change and polarization, but for now we have to keep studying the specific conditions under which desirable and less desirable effects occur. Only then, we will be able to strategically interfere in the communication process in a way that de-polarizes opinions in a society.
