Affective polarization

Two projects funded by the Swedish research council, 2023-2025 are dedicated to explore the role of digitalization in affective polarization and the role of affective polarization in politicization of Covid-19. A third project that is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, aims to study the effects of affective polarization on legislative behavior.

A divided digitalized democracy

The Divid-Dem project focuses on affective polarization – a democratic challenge that entails negativity and bias against political “outgroups”, which leads to animosity between partisans. The novelty of Divid-Dem lies in exploring how affective polarization may arise through the reciprocal relationship between politicians and citizens, which we argue is made possible by social media. We focus on how politicians’ online messaging on social media platforms, and citizens’ social identity attachments and social media behavior influence each other.

Divid-Dem comprises three interrelated parts drawing on political science, psychology, and communication. In the three parts, we focus on investigating 1) how political representatives use rhetoric on social media that polarizes; 2)what the relationship between political representatives’ rhetoric on social media and users’ social media engagement is; and 3) what effect political representatives’ rhetoric has on voters’ affective polarization.

We develop a theory on political affective polarization through new hypotheses related to the role of political elites and voters in forging identities and hostility through online rhetoric. Our empirical approach employs a triangulation of methods, relying on computational analysis of social media data, qualitative rhetorical analysis, focus groups, and controlled experiments. Moreover, each empirical study breaks new ground in terms of how to analyze affective polarization and its causes.

Polarizing pandemics

When Covid-19 hit the world, the initial response was that political representatives and people were united in their efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. However, as the most acute phase declined, the situation surrounding Covid-19 quickly divided politicians and citizens in most countries on how to deal with the pandemic, creating a polarized society, which influenced both preventative behavior and attitudes. We aim to analyze how such polarization arises and what it leads to in terms of attitudes and behaviors related to Covid-19, such as adherence to regulations and vaccination. We here focus on “affective polarization”, which reflects social identity divisions and emotions related to belonging to a group and seeing some other group as a hated outgroup. In three parts, we explore 1) how the political elite contributed to a polarized society through their social media rhetoric, 2) how such rhetoric influence individuals’ affective polarization, attitudes and behaviors related to the pandemic, and 3) the psychological factors that explain attitudes toward vaccination. We employ a variety of methods such as computational text-analyses of social media material, controlled experiments, and a large-scale survey. To create a society that is equipped to handle another pandemic, it is of highest priority to understand the psychological mechanisms related to identity and partisanship that underpin the attitudes and behaviors of individuals in relation to Covid-19.

Divided Parliaments? Polarization, Moralization, and the Risk of Gridlock

In well-functioning democracies, political representatives are capable of compromising to pass legislation that solve problems facing citizens. This entails the need to respond to crises and to adapt policies that are not subjected to the whims of partisanship. Recently, scholars have observed increased “affective polarization”, entailing hostility towards political opponents, in the electorates across many western democracies. Such partisan hostility can threaten the effectiveness and legitimacy of democratic policymaking if it spills over into the functioning of legislatures, leading to gridlock and stalemate. In this project we investigate if affective polarization influences the legislative behavior of political representatives. We suggest that affective polarization at the elite level entails increased use of moralized language in communication. When using moralized language, representatives signal that compromising is unlikely, since it becomes difficult to ‘split the difference’ on issues of morality. So far, there is very little research on the effects of affective polarization on legislative behavior. Hence, we fill a clear gap. Empirically, we focus on the Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish parliaments. To establish the degree of affective polarization and moralization in a legislature, we utilize quantitative text analyses of legislative speeches by representatives as a measure of their emotional and moral content and connect this to legislation.

The political polarization of climate change

The aim of this project is to explore the political polarization of climate change. Considering the catastrohic prospects of the changing climate, there is a pressing need to understand what influences people’s opinions toward climate change. This is particularly relevant in the Swedish context given that there is a widening gap between political groups in Sweden on climate issues, and we therefore focus on this case.

We focus on affective polarization, which refers to when individuals develop strong emotional attachments to their own political group and dislike and bias toward “outgroups”. These biases could make people less willing to listen to knowledge-based arguments and to engage in sustainable behaviours if they are associated with “the other side”. This would impede climate change mitigation. Thus, understanding the association between polarization and climate change opinions and finding ways to increase individuals’ willingness to engage in sustainable behaviours, is paramount. Considering that political representatives’ rhetoric likely influence polarization and willingness to engage in sustainable behaviours, we focus specifically on their role.