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Toxic Polarisation Online

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Toxic polarisation online

Understanding online polarisation and its impact on the UK political process

BuildUp’s Helena Puig Larrauri and JGI/Community Resolve’s Hen Wilkinson have been developing a bid using BuildUp’s methodology to measure affective polarisation online, and to link this to political division in the UK.

For over a decade, digital peacebuilders BuildUp have been developing tools to track and measure affective polarisation. Further definitions and relevant tech tools can be found on their excellent website.

Using a browser extension which participants load onto their computer, we will scrape the top 10 posts shown in the feed on the various social media sites which they allow us to access. The data collected will then be analysed to identify polarizing trends and explore the impact of key political influencers. This aim would be to develop this first stage of research to work in a more targeted way around online communication norms with key influencers. The project is developing and currently looking for funding.

Build Up diagram 1

What's the point?

‘The aim of a pluralist democracy is to provide the institutions that will allow [conflicts] to take an agonistic form, in which opponents will treat each other not as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries who will fight for the victory of their position while recognizing the right of their opponents to fight for theirs. An agonistic democracy requires the availability of a choice between real alternatives.’ (Mouffe, 2009)

The polarizing effect of communication technologies on political systems has been well documented over the last decade, in evidence in countries as disparate as the US, Brazil and India. As the global domination of technology accelerates, so too does its malign influence on political subtlety and nuance, with an exponential increase in online toxicity over the last five years. This direction of travel is unlikely to halt, creating an immensely challenging issue for democracies and pluralistic political structures around the globe: the impact of communication technologies on social harmony, electoral manipulation and the functioning of democracy.

As of 2023, around 60 million individuals - approximately 93% - of the UK’s population were using mobile internet services, most via internet browsers, email and social media apps. While the impact of online toxicity on domestic politics has been extensively studied in the US, it is as yet relatively unexplored in the UK. This research aims to address that gap, building on studies of the levels of affective polarisation in the UK in the wake of Brexit (Hobolt et al. 2021). Hobolt et al.’s study unearthed evidence of polarisation between Labour and Conservative voters as well as between opinion-based groups (Bliuc et al. 2007; McGarty et al. 2009), where the shared opinion had become the basis of a social identity (Tajfel and Turner 1979; Huddy 2001), crosscutting political identities.

In a functioning pluralistic political system, multiple viewpoints and positions are negotiated and managed through a focus on common ground – the central practice of peacebuilding in whatever context. Political theorist Chantal Mouffe’s made a distinction between agonistic and antagonistic political conflict: agonistic conflict recognises the right of individuals to hold different viewpoints while still acknowledging their humanity, while antagonistic political conflict strips the ‘other’ of humanity or dignity. The work of Stray, Ivyer and Puig Larrauri (2023) transposes Mouffe’s thought to our current technologically-influenced political environment, highlighting the close ties between the idea of agonistic democracy and conflict transformation theory and practice.

Hen Wilkinson, MSc, MRes, PhD
Director, Community Resolve
Research Fellow Jean Golding Institute

After decades of work in UK urban communities skilling local people to manage everyday confllicts they experience, Hen's focus now is on critical engagements with peacetech - where peacebuilding meets technology
.

Helena Puig Larrauri
Co-founder & Strategy Lead, Build Up
UN advisor on Digital Technologies and Mediation
Helena is a peacebuilding professional with over a decade of experience advising and working with civil society actors and multi-lateral organisations in conflict contexts and polarized environments. She specializes in the integration of digital technology and innovation processes to peace processes and civic dialogues.

Related reading and resources

Online articles

The big idea: are we really so polarised? | Books | The Guardian

The polarisation of party supporters since 2015 and the problem of the 'empty centre' – in maps | British Politics and Policy at LSE

Political polarisation and participation - POST (parliament.uk)

The polarisation of party supporters since 2015 and the problem of the 'empty centre' – in maps | British Politics and Policy at LSE

Polarisation during the general election campaign - King's College London (kcl.ac.uk)

Covid-19 Areas of Research Interest.

Further reading

Allchorn, W., Dafnos, A. (2020). Far-Right Mobilisations in Great Britain: 2009-2019. CARR FRGB Dataset Research Report. Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.

Anduiza, E., Guinjoan, M., & Rico, G. (2019). Populism, participation, and political equality. European Political Science Review, 11(1), 109-124.

Bergsen, P. (2019). Don’t Be Afraid of Political Fragmentation. Chatham House.

Berinsky, A.J., Lenz, G.S. (2011). Education and Political Participation: Exploring the Causal Link. Polit Behav 33, 357–373.

Berinsky, A., et al (2020). The Effect of Associative Racial Cues in Elections, Political Communication, 37:4, 512-529

Blickle, K. (2020). Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports.

Boxell, L., Gentzkow, M., and Shapiro, J. (2020). Cross-country trends in affective polarization. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 26669.

Busher, J & Macklin, G (2015) Interpreting “Cumulative Extremism”: Six Proposals for Enhancing Conceptual Clarity, Terrorism and Political Violence, 27:5, 884-905

Drutman, L. (2020). The two-party system is killing our democracy. Vox

Duffy, B. et al (2019). Divided Britain? Polarisation and fragmentation trends in the UK. KCL Policy Institute.

The Economist (2019). The fragmentation of the big parties.

DiMaggio, P., Evans, J., Bryson, B. (1996). Have American’s Social Attituides Become More Polarized? American Journal of Sociology vol. 102, No. 3, pp. 690-755

Grechyna, D. Political polarization in the UK: measures and socioeconomic correlates. Const Polit Econ 34, 210–225 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-022-09368-8 =

Grosso, M., et al (2019). Relative deprivation and inequalities in social and political activism. Acta Politica, vol.54, pp398-429.

Grumbach, J.M., Sahn, A. & Staszak, S. (2020). Gender, Race, and Intersectionality in Campaign Finance. Polit Behav.

Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Kovacheff, C. (2020). The activist’s dilemma: Extreme protest actions reduce popular support for social movements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(5), 1086–1111.

Hobolt, S., Leeper, T., Tilley, J. (2020). Divided by the Vote: Affective Polarization in the Wake of the Brexit Referendum. British Journal of Political Science, 1-18.

La Due Lake, R. and Huckfeldt, R., 1998. Social capital, social networks, and political participation. Political psychology, 19(3), pp.567-584.

Kleiner, TM. (2020) Does ideological polarisation mobilise citizens? Eur Polit Sci 19, 573–602.

Mason, L. (2018). Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. University of Chicago Press.

More in Common [online]. Britain’s Choice: Common Ground and Division in 2020s Britain. Accessed 26/03/21.

Quaranta, M. (2012). The Rise of Unconventional Political Participation in Italy: Measurement Equivalence and Trends, 1976-2009. Bulletin of Italian Politics, vol.4, no.2, pp.251-276.

Schulte-Cross, J. (2020). How the mobilisation of the politically disaffected works to the advantage of right-wing populist parties. The Loop.

Berinsky, A., et al (2020). The Effect of Associative Racial Cues in Elections, Political Communication, 37:4, 512-529

Wheatley, J. (2020). The future of politics after COVID-19: Four trends that are already discernible. LSE Blog