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Up next in this ECREA 2024 session is the excellent Giovanni Boccia Artieri, whose interest is in networking between fringe Telegram channels in Italy. These are connected to disinformation ecosystems, the spread of conspiracy theories, and the normalisation of populism and political extremism. Fringe online spaces can especially serve as laboratories for extremist narratives here – even though they can also provide a safe space for marginalised and disadvantaged communities.

The present study examines the fringe Telegramsphere in Italy, but eventually also aims to study its interconnections with mainstream media. Telegram is already know for fostering affective polarisation, spreading alternative …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Azade Kakavand, whose interest is in mapping far-right voices across platforms. This is methodologically difficult, and requires a matching of user identities across platforms – especially also because far-right actors are well-known for using multiple platforms for a variety of distinct purposes.

The present study employs the process of user identity linkage (UIL), which was developed in computer science for user profiling, marketing, and cybersecurity purposes. Here, however, the approach is not limited to natural persons but is applied to human and non-human accounts of any kind. The project draws on …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Aytalina Kulichkina, whose focus is on the role of social media in authoritarian settings. Social media have been prominent for protests in such contexts, but have also been used by regimes to suppress and undermine protests as well as to identify protesters. The picture remains blurry due to the many contextual differences, the various platforms used, changes over time, and other differing factors, however.

Aytalina therefore conducted a literature review of existing work on these questions, covering the years from 1997 to 2023. Searching for a broad range of keywords in …

The next ECREA 2024 session is also on polarisation, and I’m chairing as well as blogging it. We start with Petra de Place Bak, whose interest is in the cognitive preferences that make specific types of online content more salient and shareable. One aspect of this might be sentiment- and emotion-based biases.

Petra’s focus is on social media communication, which has to address the twin challenges of information abundance and attention scarcity; this is affected both by platform algorithms and users’ own cognitive preferences. Negative content biases can play a role especially in the latter, as can biases (both positive …

The final speaker in this ECREA 2024 on polarisation is Michael Brüggemann, whose interest is in normative perspectives on polarisation. These stem largely from the two normative traditions of the Habermasian public sphere, where issue and ideological polarisation is not a problem if it can be resolved through rational debate and democratic listening; and Chantal Mouffe’s concept of agonistic pluralism, where transparency in conflicts and political mobilisation are central and polarisation can be a useful motivator for passionate and divisive (but not inimical) communication.

Current debates are moving beyond this by discussing levels of polarisation, which may become problematic and …

Up next in the session at ECREA 2024 is Christel van Eck, whose focus is on how we understand the concept of depolarisation. Her project conducted a systematic literature review of the (de)polarisation literature, eventually identifying some 89 relevant articles from a much larger list of work that somehow mentions the concept. It coded these for a number of features, including conceptual, analytical, and methodological factors and the evidence base provided.

The majority of these articles came from communication, political science, and psychology; the vast majority addressed polarisation rather than depolarisation; they focussed on ideological more than affective polarisation; examined …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Shota Gelovani, who shifts our discussion further to the theme of democratic listening: the scrutiny and constructive discussion of statements by other citizens in a democracy. This can happen also between dissenting individuals, and may lead, if not to the removal of differences, then at least to partial consensus and an enlightened dissent.

Analytical listening (understanding others’ views) and critical listening (identifying errors in others’ judgments) are especially central to this, and democratic listening will also involve giving listening signals, substantive engagement with others’ claims, taking perspectives, and generating a feeling …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Matthias Revers, who continues our focus on polarisation in climate communication. The project sent out a recruitment survey in Germany and the UK to recruit participants with divergent views on climate change, then organised some 40 conversations on Zoom between participants with opposing views, and examined whether such conversations entrenched or weakened disagreements and antipathy between viewpoints. This examined conversational moves (like signalling willingness or interest, and steering the conversation in particular directions), as well as practices of assessment (articulating approval or disapproval), drawing on analytical categories like conversational receptiveness and …

The post-lunch session on this first day of ECREA 2024 conference is on polarisation, and starts with Hendrik Meyer, whose interest is in the case of disruptive climate protests. Such protests, in Germany for instance by the Letzte Generation protest group, tend to attract controversial media coverage, and it may be such coverage rather than the protests themselves that drive polarisation dynamics.

Untangling the various factors influencing such dynamics is difficult, and this project examined both news media coverage and social media debates to determine patterns of both issue and group polarisation, in both the content of communication and the …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 is Agnieszka Stępińska, whose focus is on understanding from current researchers how they approach the study of public opinion formation. This includes academic scholars, experts working for think tanks, and professional public opinion pollsters, and a short questionnaire will be distributed to these groups within the coming weeks, with a focus on central and eastern European and Balkans countries.