Element 68Element 45Element 44Element 63Element 64Element 43Element 41Element 46Element 47Element 69Element 76Element 62Element 61Element 81Element 82Element 50Element 52Element 79Element 79Element 7Element 8Element 73Element 74Element 17Element 16Element 75Element 13Element 12Element 14Element 15Element 31Element 32Element 59Element 58Element 71Element 70Element 88Element 88Element 56Element 57Element 54Element 55Element 18Element 20Element 23Element 65Element 21Element 22iconsiconsElement 83iconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsiconsElement 84iconsiconsElement 36Element 35Element 1Element 27Element 28Element 30Element 29Element 24Element 25Element 2Element 1Element 66
Political polarization and individualized online information environments: A longitudinal tracking study (POLTRACK)

Political polarization and individualized online information environments: A longitudinal tracking study (POLTRACK)

The online information environment provides citizens with an abundance of news and other content relevant for political opinion formation that varies considerably in terms of journalistic quality and political extremity.

Politicians, journalists and academics have speculated that by facilitating individualized processes of opinion formation, the current high-choice environment of online news websites, social media and other information intermediaries is related to audience fragmentation and political polarization. Yet, research on the interplay of media exposure and dynamic polarization processes is sparse and at times contradictory. One of the reasons is that methods traditionally employed by social scientists to measure exposure such as sur-vey-based self-reports inadequately capture online behavior.
 
We therefore choose a different approach in the three-year cooperation project with the Universities of Bremen and Konstanz and the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences GESIS. Our project brings together techniques from computational social science with theories and methods from communication and political science. At its core is a yearlong web tracking of a representative sample of approximately 1,500 German citizens from an online access panel. The participants are surveyed on demographics, political opinions, and media use in five waves and consent to having their visited websites tracked. Through automated crawling and text analysis of those website contents, we are able to measure the source, issue, and actor diversity of the information participants are exposed to and relate that to the development of their political opinions over time.

With this longitudinal data, we systematically study the interplay between online information use and political opinions by statistically disentangling within-person changes. On an aggregated level, we answer questions about audience fragmentation and the absolute and shifting levels of issue-based and affective polarization. Findings have implications for academic and political debates on echo chambers, societal cohesion, and the regulation of online environments.

Photo by Wendy Wei on Pexels
show more

Project Description

More information will follow.

Project Information

Overview

Duration: 2022-2025

Research programme:
RP1 - Transformation of Public Communication

Involved persons

Dr. Lisa Merten

Third party

Leibniz-Gemeinschaft (Leibniz-Wettbewerb Kooperative Exzellenz)

Cooperation Partner

GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (Sebastian Stier, Katrin Weller)
University of Konstanz (Juhi Kulshrestha)
University of Bremen (Cornelius Puschmann)

Contact person

Dr. Lisa Merten
Postdoc Researcher Media Use & Digital Communication

Dr. Lisa Merten

Leibniz-Institut für Medienforschung │ Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI)
Rothenbaumchaussee 36
20148 Hamburg
Tel. +49 (0)40 45 02 17 87

Send Email

MAYBE YOU ARE ALSO INTERESTED IN THESE TOPICS?

Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter and receive the Institute's latest news via email.

SUBSCRIBE!