{"id":3562,"date":"2025-02-02T09:34:18","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T09:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/?p=3562"},"modified":"2025-02-07T10:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T10:21:08","slug":"last-generation-fridays-for-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/research-projects\/last-generation-fridays-for-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy to disagree: Drivers of affective and ideological polarization in interpersonal discussions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Happy to disagree: Drivers of affective and ideological polarization in interpersonal discussions<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Matthias Revers<\/a>, Lone Sorensen<\/a>, Michael Br\u00fcggemann<\/a><\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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While polarization is most pronounced in the US, there is a strong sense also in European democracies that a gulf is emerging between groups of citizens. Meanwhile, the climate crisis is becoming ever more urgent and is being increasingly politicized in culture war discourses by some political elites. The scientific consensus on climate change remains; however, citizens who are differently affected by and engaged with climate change also appear to drift apart both on policy issues and how they feel about activist interventions<\/span>. We conceive of polarization as a discursive and interactive process. Polarization is thereby dynamic and engendered, shaped, reinforced or broken down by communication, whether face-to-face or mediated. This paper deals with interpersonal communication \u2013 what Revers and Coleman term micropolarization (forthcoming) \u2013 and explores how macro-level affective and ideological divisions are enacted, negotiated or overcome in communicative interaction.<\/span><\/p>\n

We focus on climate change as a highly politicized topic that mobilizes variant affective engagement among different groups of citizens while, partly, cutting across traditional ideological divisions. This exploratory study uses unmoderated dyadic conversations, i.e. between two participants. We explore micropolarization in two countries, the UK and Germany, both of which have similar levels of climate denialism (YouGov, 2019), with a sample of 80 self-selected German citizens and 50 British citizens acquired through cooperation of the \u201cMy Country Talks\u201d initiative in Germany and with The Daily Mirror in Britain. <\/span>The dyadic conversations involve participants with oppositional positions on climate change paired through a recruitment survey which measured their opinions on climate activism and climate policies. People were paired and conducted unmoderated online video conversations to explore their differences. Each conversation lasted approximately one hour.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the conversation, participants completed a second survey to measure any change in their views concerning the issues discussed (ideological polarization) and their feelings towards their conversation partner (affective polarization). The interview transcripts were also coded for these categories, as well as for a range of speech acts which polarized or depolarised the subsequent discussion. <\/span>First results from our analysis indicate that interpersonal conversation encourages affective depolarisation but entrenches ideological polarization. Affective depolarisation appears to be driven by the identification of common ground, often unrelated to ideological positions, the perception of willingness to listen and the articulation of appreciation of the value of the other\u2019s perspective. While these conversational moves are performed by individuals and their personal political identities, they reflect, take cues from and reference politicians\u2019 public performances of ideas and emotions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ideological polarization seems to be more frequently reinforced than affective polarization, often accompanied by participants\u2019 misrecognition of each other\u2019s\u2019 identities. Notably, ideological polarization comes with affective depolarisation in some cases, often through active listening and expressions of empathy. In other words, the interaction made some people happy to disagree and to get along with others who think differently. Further analysis will deepen understanding of how different dimensions of de-\/polarization in interaction reinforce and alleviate antagonism. A more detailed picture of micro-level polarization will also elucidate larger-scale discursive polarization. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Happy to disagree: Drivers of affective and ideological polarization in interpersonal discussions Matthias Revers, Lone Sorensen, Michael Br\u00fcggemann W\u00e4hrend Polarisierung in den USA am st\u00e4rksten ausgepr\u00e4gt ist, zeigt sich auch in den europ\u00e4ischen Demokratien zunehmend, dass eine Kluft zwischen verschiedenen B\u00fcrgergruppen entsteht. Gleichzeitig nimmt die Dringlichkeit der Klimakrise zu und wird dabei von einigen politischen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-depolarizing-conversations","category-research-projects"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3562"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4305,"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions\/4305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transformativecommunication.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}