Polarization is a phenomenon characterizing modern societies, which can be measured using social scientific research tools. The word describes, metaphorically, the distance between opinions expressed in the public arena, regarding facts and the acceptable interpretation of facts. Political polarization can be measured as the ideological distance between members and supporters of political parties, which evolves over time. Strategic political communication increases polarization, so that parties gain more votes from radicalized supporters. For the society at large, strategically driven polarization may have adverse effects, causing a difficult time for communities in agreeing on a plan in crisis situations, since community members do not share the same definition of the crisis.
Media and communication research shows that not only politicians drive opinion polarization. This phenomenon is also an effect of mainstream media and of social media. More specifically, newsrooms with a strong bias in favour of or against a specific agenda, known as partisan media, are followed by electorate members with extreme views. The editorial line of partisan media, based on outrage and radical positioning on public issues, drives these electorate members even farther to the extremes.
In the case of social media, the distribution of content depends on algorithms that propose text, images and video to specific users that are related to their past online behaviour. The new content they are exposed to in the present is similar to the type of content they consumed, interacted with, and shared in the past. The effect is that social media users end up interacting mostly with other users sharing similar interests, an effect known as an echo chamber. The echo chamber hypothesis has been discussed in academia over the last two decades and maintains that the abundance of news and opinions, available online and offline, allows people to choose sources that echo (and consolidate) their political, social, or economic views. As a result, polarization increases between groups that hold different interests and thus participate in different echo chambers. For example, research has demonstrated that there is a polarization between followers of conspiracy theories and followers of science postings on Facebook.
Polarization may lead to ineffectiveness and dysfunction at different levels of government since it erodes trust in public figures and public institutions. Yet, longitudinal research on the voting of US elected political representatives in the House and in the Senate indicates that historically, the distance between liberal and conservative groups decreased dramatically in times of profound crises, for example during the Great Depression and the Second World War. More recently, research on partisan polarization in the UK during the evolution of the COVID-19 crisis showed that both Labour and Conservative voters evaluated in a similar manner scandals related to the government’s handling the health crisis. These research results indicate that polarization is a real phenomenon that may lead to dramatic effects on communities and individuals. Nevertheless, during periods of profound crisis, public official and citizens may start to interpret facts similarly, lowering the distance between the divergent positions on public issues and allowing for solutions to be found, to the benefit of society at large.
