Political polarization: causes, consequences, and solutions

Introduction

Political polarization has risen in many countries over the past decades and cross-party animosity now extends to previously non-partisan issues. Polarization is alarming as it undermines social cohesion, fuels distrust in institutions and violence against out-groups, and can even favor the emergence of conspiratorial beliefs.

Consequences of Polarization

These cleavages also hinder intergroup cooperation, making it difficult to build the broad political support needed to tackle urgent social challenges. Many have ascribed the rise in polarization to the Internet and social media, seen as disproportionately exposing individuals to like-minded content and people, thus further reinforcing their opinions.

Research Gaps

Yet, the causes of political polarization, and the role of the Internet, remain largely understudied, and few solutions have been proposed to reduce polarization and avert its direst consequences.

Project Overview

My project investigates the technological and social determinants of political polarization and its broader consequences for society, and explores possible ways to alleviate this problem. To this end, I tackle four distinct but intertwined questions:

1. I examine the extent to which personalized search engine results expose users to divergent political content and affect their political views.
2. I study the extent to which the introduction of paywalls by online news outlets has affected users’ news consumption, information inequities, and ideological segregation.
3. I examine how technology-driven economic shocks that favor social exclusion and undermine workers’ identity influence beliefs in conspiracy theories.
4. Finally, I study whether perspective-taking interventions can offer an effective tool for reducing ideological and ethnic tensions, and promoting intergroup cooperation.

Expected Outcomes

My results will provide a unified framework for understanding the complex technological and social forces behind political polarization, and for formulating concrete policy recommendations on how to mitigate it.