FolioStart free

Political Science · Literature

Research papers on Political polarization

Recent and highly-cited academic work on political polarization, gathered from Semantic Scholar, CrossRef and OpenAlex.

Search all 200M+ papers on this topic, free →Or track new political polarization papers automatically as they publish

  3. Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

    Peter Van Aelst, Jesper Strömbäck, Toril Aalberg, et al. · 2017 · Annals of the International Communication Association · 967 citations

    During the last decennia media environments and political communication systems have changed fundamentally. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to review research on key changes and trends in political information environments and assess their democratic implications. We will focus on advanced postindustrial democracies and six concerns that are all closely linked to the dissemination and acquisition of political knowledge: (1) declining supply of political information, (2) declining quality of news, (3) increasing media

    Save this paper

  4. Political Polarization on Twitter

    Michael Conover, A. Ratkiewicz, Matthew Francisco, et al. · 2021 · Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media · 635 citations

    In this study we investigate how social media shape the networked public sphere and facilitate communication between communities with different political orientations. We examine two networks of political communication on Twitter, comprised of more than 250,000 tweets from the six weeks leading up to the 2010 U.S. congressional midterm elections. Using a combination of network clustering algorithms and manually-annotated data we demonstrate that the network of political retweets exhibits a highly segregated partisan structure, with extremely limited connectivity between left- and right-leaning users. Surprisingly this is not the case for the user-to-user mention network, which is dominated b

    Save this paper

  5. Toward a Theory of Pernicious Polarization and How It Harms Democracies: Comparative Evidence and Possible Remedies

    Jennifer McCoy, Murat Somer · 2018 · The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 589 citations

    This article compares the dynamics of polarization in the eleven case studies analyzed in this special issue to draw conclusions about antecedents of severe political and societal polarization, the characteristics and mechanisms of such polarization, and consequences of severe polarization for democracy. We find that the emergence of pernicious polarization (when a society is split into mutually distrustful “Us vs. Them” camps) is not attributable to any specific underlying social or political cleavage nor any particular institutional make-up. Instead, pernicious polarization arises when political entrepreneurs pursue their political objectives by using polarizing strategies, such as mobiliz

    Save this paper

  6. Political Effects of the Internet and Social Media

    Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Maria Petrova, Рубен Ениколопов · 2020 · Annual Review of Economics · 555 citations

    How do the Internet and social media affect political outcomes? We review empirical evidence from the recent political economy literature, focusing primarily on work that considers traits that distinguish the Internet and social media from traditional off-line media, such as low barriers to entry and reliance on user-generated content. We discuss the main results about the effects of the Internet in general, and social media in particular, on voting, street protests, attitudes toward government, political polarization, xenophobia, and politicians’ behavior. We also review evidence on the role of social media in the dissemination of fake news, and we summarize results about the strategies emp

    Save this paper

  7. Divided by the Vote: Affective Polarization in the Wake of the Brexit Referendum

    Sara B. Hobolt, Thomas J. Leeper, James Tilley · 2020 · British Journal of Political Science · 495 citations

    Abstract A well-functioning democracy requires a degree of mutual respect and a willingness to talk across political divides. Yet numerous studies have shown that many electorates are polarized along partisan lines, with animosity towards the partisan out-group. This article further develops the idea of affective polarization, not by partisanship, but instead by identification with opinion-based groups. Examining social identities formed during Britain's 2016 referendum on European Union membership, the study uses surveys and experiments to measure the intensity of partisan and Brexit-related affective polarization. The results show that Brexit identities are prevalent, felt to be personally

    Save this paper

  8. Political Polarization on the Digital Sphere: A Cross-platform, Over-time Analysis of Interactional, Positional, and Affective Polarization on Social Media

    Moran Yarchi, Christian Baden, Neta Kligler-Vilenchik · 2020 · Political Communication · 438 citations

    Political polarization on the digital sphere poses a real challenge to many democracies around the world. Although the issue has received some scholarly attention, there is a need to improve the conceptual precision in the increasingly blurry debate. The use of computational communication science approaches allows us to track political conversations in a fine-grained manner within their natural settings – the realm of interactive social media. The present study combines different algorithmic approaches to studying social media data in order to capture both the interactional structure and content of dynamic political talk online. We conducted an analysis of political polarization across socia

    Save this paper

  9. Who Dislikes Whom? Affective Polarization between Pairs of Parties in Western Democracies

    Noam Gidron, James Adams, Will Horne · 2022 · British Journal of Political Science · 164 citations

    Abstract While dislike of opposing parties, that is, affective polarization, is a defining feature of contemporary politics, research on this topic largely centers on the United States. We introduce an approach that analyzes affective polarization between pairs of parties, bridging the US two-party system and multiparty systems in other democracies. Analyzing survey data from twenty Western democracies since the mid-1990s, first, we show that partisans' dislike of out-parties is linked to elite policy disagreements on economic issues and, increasingly over time, also to cultural issues. Secondly, we argue and empirically demonstrate that governing coalition partners in parliamentary democrac

    Save this paper

  10. Do Search Algorithms Endanger Democracy? An Experimental Investigation of Algorithm Effects on Political Polarization

    Jaeho Cho, Saifuddin Ahmed, Martin Hilbert, et al. · 2020 · Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media · 160 citations

    This study examines algorithm effects on user opinion, utilizing a real-world recommender algorithm of a highly popular video-sharing platform, YouTube. We experimentally manipulate user search/watch history by our custom programming. A controlled laboratory experiment is then conducted to examine whether exposure to algorithmically recommended content reinforces and polarizes political opinions. Results suggest that political self-reinforcement, as indicated by the political emotion-ideology alignment, and affective polarization are heightened by political videos – selected by the YouTube recommender algorithm – based on participants’ own search preferences. Suggestions for how to reduce al

    Save this paper

  11. Affective Polarization in Multiparty Systems? Comparing Affective Polarization Towards Voters and Parties in Norway and the United States

    Erik Knudsen · 2021 · Scandinavian Political Studies · 73 citations

    A growing body of comparative studies on partisan hostility – a phenomenon known as affective polarization – is providing evidence that partisan affective polarization is generally no greater in the United States than it is in many European multiparty systems. This article takes the comparative literature on affective polarization one step further by presenting the first comparative study on affective polarization that simultaneously uses, compares and combines a direct measure of affective polarization towards voters (using the inter‐party marriage measure) and an indirect measure of affective polarization towards parties (using the like/dislike of party measure) while accounting for the fa

    Save this paper

  12. Social Media Use and Political Engagement in Polarized Times. Examining the Contextual Roles of Issue and Affective Polarization in Developed Democracies

    Michael Chan, Jingjing Yi · 2024 · Political Communication · 34 citations

    Studies addressing the normative questions of whether social media use positively or negatively affects citizens' levels of democratic engagement and satisfaction with democracy have produced mixed findings.This study tests the proposition that political polarization plays an important contingent role in explaining these relationships.Combining Varieties of Democracy (VDEM) and World Values Survey (WVS) data, this study examines how issue polarization and affective polarization at the country level shape the relationships between social media use for political information and democratic outcomes in 27 developed democracies.The findings show divergent consequences of social media use continge

    Save this paper

  13. A new regime divide? Democratic backsliding, attitudes towards democracy and affective polarization

    Theresa Gessler, Natasha Wunsch · 2025 · European Journal of Political Research · 34 citations

    Abstract Partisan‐based affective polarization has been posited as a key explanation for citizens' tolerance towards democratic backsliding, with voters more likely to overlook democratic violations conducted by in‐party candidates. Our study theorizes and empirically explores the reverse perspective on this relationship: focusing on the role of the opposition, we submit that backsliding may crystallize an affective dislike among opposition supporters towards the governing party and its supporters that stems from a regime divide over democracy itself. To probe the plausibility of this argument, we leverage original survey data collected in Hungary, where democratic backslid

    Save this paper

  14. Authoritarianism, Affective Polarization, and Economic Ideology

    Christopher D. Johnston · 2018 · Political Psychology · 26 citations

    I consider two theories of affective polarization between Democrats and Republicans in the United States: (1) ideological divergence on size‐of‐government issues (Webster & Abramowitz, ) and (2) authoritarianism‐based partisan sorting (Hetherington & Weiler, ). I argue that these alternatives cannot be easily disentangled, because politically engaged citizens seek out and assimilate information about economic policy from elites who are perceived to share their core traits and cultural values. In this way, the economic preferences emphasized by the first view are partly endogenous to the worldview divide emphasized by the second. Elite position taking on economic issues may elicit str

    Save this paper

  15. Fostering Open-Minded Political Engagement through Online Interscholastic Discussions: Toward Reducing Affective Political Polarization

    Brett L. M. Levy, Alina Lewis · 2025 · Democracy & Education · 1 citations

    This study explores how political discussions among diverse youth can support students’ open-minded political engagement. For this study, we collaborated with two teachers to adapt and enact instruction aimed at supporting students’ discussion of controversial issues across political, geographic, and cultural boundaries. During an instructional unit exploring various ways to strengthen our election system, students engaged in discussions with their classmates and with peers from another school via an online video discussion board. We collected data through observations and interviews. Our findings indicate that the instruction enhanced students’ understanding of their political bubbles and t

    Save this paper

  16. Affective partisan polarization, citizens’ attitudes, and political behavior in Swiss democracy

    Benjamin Jansen, Alois Stutzer · 2026 · Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics · 1 citations

    Abstract There is a concern that citizens with different political positions and party affiliations increasingly dislike each other. We examine this affective polarization, which is often associated with a weakening of democracy, in the context of Switzerland’s multiparty landscape with proportional governmental representation. Evaluating the long-term development of affective polarization in Switzerland with both historical and newly gathered data for 2023, we find an increase between 1999 and 2003 but hardly any change over the last two decades. In a complementary perspective based on voters’ revealed preferences, our analysis of straight- vs. split-ticket voting behavior

    Save this paper

  17. UNITED STATES, BRAZIL, POLITICAL POLARIZATION AND DEMOCRATIC PUSHBACK. ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY?

    Nicolò Ferraris · 2023 · Il Politico · 1 citations

    This article, starting with the attacks on U.S. and Brazilian democratic institutions in January 2021 and 2023, aims to understand whether and how the phenomenon of political polarization may be related to an increase in political violence in democracies and a possible democratic retreat. Likewise, the concept of democratic resilience and how democracies can resist the dangers of political polarization will be investigated. The phenomenon of political polarization can be detrimental to democracies in that, if extreme, it can bring politics to the essential categories of "friend and foe," the politics of "us versus them," which can result in the acceptance of undemocratic actions such as the

    Save this paper

  18. Unaffected polarization? Populism and affective polarization in comparative perspective

    Alberto Stefanelli, Bruno Castanho Silva · 2026 · Political Psychology · 1 citations

    Abstract With both affective polarization and populism on the rise in several countries, many have proposed a link between the two phenomena. Yet, research offers little direct evidence on whether populist individuals are more polarized than their mainstream conunterparts. This paper aims to fill this gap by using data from 37 elections in 31 countries to provide a comparative account of the relationship between populism and affective polarization at the individual level. Contrary to common assumptions, resuts show no significant difference in affective polarization between more and less populist individuals. Instead, we identify a curvilinear relationship wherein both indi

    Save this paper

  19. Polarization and Political Violence: When Polarization Turns Violent

    Jeffrey S. Kopstein · 2026 · Journal of Democracy

    Abstract: This essay challenges the assumption that political polarization leads naturally to political violence. Surveying cases from ancient Alexandria and the Russian pogroms to lynching in the American South, Hindu-Muslim riots in India, and the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, the essay argues that polarization turns deadly only when several forces converge: when affective hostility fuses with fears of demographic change and political displacement, when groups come to see control of the polity as a matter of collective survival, and when the state retreats from enforcing equal protection. Mass democracy heightens the danger by translating demographic difference into poli

    Save this paper

  21. Affective Alignment and Hidden Conflicts: Political Emotions in Blended Spaces of Democratic Education Classrooms

    Sonja Helkala · 2026 · Democracy & Education

    The interaction between emotions and politics is evident in democratic education settings. This study contributes to the literature on the role of political emotions in democratic education by shedding light on the significance that the new digital and social media environments have for the manifestation of political emotions in educational contexts. In Finnish schools, political issues are incorporated into the curriculum, and political questions are addressed as part of democratic education and political identities are formed. However, there has been relatively little research on political emotions in schools. This article explores political emotions in democratic education practice throug

    Save this paper

Write your paper with these sources

Folio is the integrity-first research workspace: search 200M+ papers, save sources, and write with citations that format themselves. Free for students and researchers.

Start writing free →