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Depolarizing Public Debates: Developing Tools for Transformative Communication

How can we depolarize public debates on socio-ecological transformations?

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Depolarizing Public Debates: Developing Tools for Transformative Communication

How can we depolarize public debates on socio-ecological transformations?

Robert Heinecken, "Untitled Newswomen (Joan Lunden, Connie Chung, Jane Pauley, Diane Sawyer)" (1987). Inkjet on paper. | Read More

RELEVANCY

Controversial debates, whether reported by journalists or played out in digital networks and news coverage, are fundamental to democratic processes. The development of clear alternatives represented by specific actors is a productive part of democracy. Yet, for certain challenges, such as climate change, the solutions do not lie somewhere in the middle between two extremes and it is clear that partial climate protection is not enough.

Radical ideas must be debated, which inevitably involves conflict as part of democratic discourse. Under certain conditions, however, controversies risk becoming uncontrollably polarized.

Polarization is the division of society into groups that fundamentally disagree on key issues and no longer recognize each other as legitimate participants in a common debate. Importantly, polarization is neither a universal nor a natural phenomenon, which raises questions about the factors driving it. Our research project therefore investigates the role of digital media networks and news coverage as key drivers of polarization.

ABOUT

The program Depolarizing Public Debates: Developing Tools for Transformative Communication was chaired by Michael Brüggemann and focused on how digital media networks and news coverage contribute to the polarization of society, sometimes even creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of division. The group, including fellows Shota Gelovani, Katharina Esau, Ashley Muddiman, Fritz Breithaupt, Hartmut Wessler, Mike Farjam, Helena Rauxloh, and Hendrik Meyer, studied how polarization manifests in the content of news media, digital networks, and unmediated political communication, examining how these arenas interact and influence each other.

The project concentrated on four key areas of research:

  1. measuring polarization
  2. democratic listening
  3. how can journalists change the public conversation on polarizing issues?
  4. narratives
RESEARCH AREAS

The project concentrated on four key areas of research:

  • Measuring Polarization: Qualitative and Automated Content and Network Analysis

    Led by Michael Brüggemann, this part of the project examined whether disruptive forms of climate protest lead to more polarized climate debates in Germany, and which actors are responsible for driving these polarization processes. Climate protests such as those associated with Fridays for Future (FFF) or the Last Generation (LG) are often characterized as polarizing, but different movements are perceived differently. For example, disruptive actions, such as blocking traffic, may elicit stronger reactions than more conventional protests. This research used large-scale manual and computational analyses of over 12,000 news articles and 5 million Twitter posts from 2022 and 2023 to compare the discourses surrounding FFF and LG.
    The analysis shows that while LG-related Twitter debates attract more attention, they also provoke more antagonistic and extreme frames, such as the labeling of protesters as “terrorists”. FFF-related debates, while sometimes contentious, attract less toxic content. Media coverage reflects a similar pattern: LG is primarily framed in terms of extremism and crime, while FFF is discussed more in the context of its goal of bringing about climate justice. The findings suggest that right-wing populist actors are often responsible for initiating polarizing content, resulting in an “asymmetric polarization” in which extremist rhetoric spreads more widely across media landscapes.

    The findings from this work are presented in two full papers currently under review:

    • Meyer, Hendrik, Rauxloh, Helena, Farjam, Mike, and Brüggemann, Michael (2024). “The Framing of Disruptive Climate Protest: Comparing German News on Fridays for Future and Letzte Generation”. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/jkaw8

    • Meyer, Hendrik, Pröschel, Louisa, and Brüggemann, Michael (2024). “From Disruptive Protests to Disrupted Networks? Analyzing Levels of Polarization in the German Twitter Discourses around ‘Fridays for Future’ and ‘The Last Generation’”. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/nd68z

  • Democratic Listening: “Let’s talk” Platform

    Led by Hartmut Wessler and Shota Gelovani, this project developed the "Let's Talk" platform in collaboration with CDLX Berlin to address the lack of incentive to engage in democratic listening on online platforms. The research tested whether new platform features, such as "listening-oriented buttons", could improve the quality of discussions and reduce affective polarization. In addition, the team trained an AI-based large language model (LLM) to act as a listening-oriented moderator, using a detailed moderation guide. The LLM intervened in discussions that became too tense, off-topic, or disengaged by automatically posting moderation comments.

    Early results show that while AI moderation was faster and more effective at identifying poor listening behavior, users interacted more with human-generated moderation comments, possibly due to the more personalized approach of human moderators. The exact results of the experiment will only be known after analysis of the 4,675 comments posted in the discussions, 5,183 reactions clicked by users, and 766 combinations of fully completed pre- and post-surveys from the 766 individuals who participated in the various discussion groups.

    The study is pre-registered in the Open Science Framework, and its results were presented at various conferences and workshops in the fall of 2024. This included a joint panel by the Depolarizing Public Debates group at the 10th European Communication Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in September 2024.

  • How Can Journalists Change the Public Conversation on Polarizing Issues?

    The project, led by Ashley Muddiman, examined how journalists can shift public discourse on polarizing issues like climate change by focusing on cooperative solutions rather than partisan conflict. In an experiment involving more than 1,000 participants in the United States, different types of news articles were tested to see how they affected discussions. The results showed that articles that emphasized solutions to climate change fostered more constructive discussion, with participants feeling more hopeful and willing to engage in online conversations. These articles also generated more interest, with participants expressing a greater willingness to read, share, and pay for solution-focused news compared to conflict-focused or problem-focused articles.

  • Narratives

    Led by Fritz Breithaupt, this research focused on the role of narratives in shaping group identities and driving polarization. It explored the concept of "spontaneous side-taking", in which individuals quickly choose sides in a conflict and become resistant to changing their position, even when presented with contradictory information. Early findings suggest that people tend to ignore alternative perspectives once they've made a choice, highlighting the deep-seated nature of narrative-driven polarization. Participants in the study showed strong memory retention for details associated with their chosen side, but paid little attention to the opposing viewpoint, demonstrating how conflict narratives can entrench polarization.

    This project is explored further in the resulting paper:

    Woodward, Claire, Hiskes, Ben and Breithaupt, Fritz. (2024). “Spontaneous Side-Taking Drives Memory, Empathy, and Author Attribution in Conflict Narratives”, Discover Psychology, 4(52). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-024-00159-w

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Program Affiliates

  • Anamaria Dutceac Segesten

    stayed: 20-23.06.2023

    Anamaria Dutceac Segesten is a researcher at the Department of Strategic Communication at Lund University, focusing in her work on questions of democracy, digitalization and participation.

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Anamaria, together with Mike Farjam, lend her expertise as part of a workshop on the role of European Journalism in polarizing debates. This conceptual kick-off workshop laid the groundwork for a collaboration between THE NEW INSTITUTE, the University of Hamburg, and Lund University, promising valuable insights into the role of European journalism in perceived polarization.

  • Cornelius Puschmann

    stayed: 4-8.09.2023

    Cornelius Puschmann is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at the Center for Media, Communication, and Information Research in Bremen. His research focuses on digital media usage, using computer-aided analysis methods, for example to research hate speech and the role of algorithmic personalization in news usage.

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Cornelius lend his expertise on the potential of AI and Large Language Models as part of a workshop led by him and Axel Bruns. The workshop centered on the conception and validation of automated identification of stances in discussions on climate change-related societal transformation, both on digital media platforms and in journalism.

  • Axel Bruns

    stayed: 1-14.09.2023

    Axel Bruns is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. His current research focuses on user activity on social media such as Twitter and its significance for our understanding of contemporary media publics, building particularly on innovative methods for analyzing big social data.

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Axel, together with Cornelius Puschmann, led a workshop centered on the conception and validation of automated identification of stances in discussions on climate change-related societal transformation, both on digital media platforms and in journalism.

  • Christel van Eck

    stayed: 7.10 -14.11.2023

    Christel van Eck is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. Her research, among other things, focuses on polarization and climate change communication, where she also investigates the role of online media in climate change polarization processes.

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE Christel led a workshop on exploring the evidence base of academic scholarship in depolarizing public debates.

  • Lisa Argyle

    stayed: 29.10-4.11.2023

    Lisa Argyle is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. Part of her research agenda focuses on computational social science aspects located around questions of political participation and polarization.

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE Lisa highlighted the crucial role of artificial intelligence in addressing societal polarization as part of a workshop titled "The Role of AI in Depolarization Measures”. Lisa’s expertise also informed the discussion on LLMs (Large Language Models), and how they can be utilized to improve the quality of debates in a depolarizing matter.

  • Marc Ziegele

    stayed: 13-17.11.2023

    Marc Ziegele is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the Institute of Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. His current research, among other things, focuses on Online journalism and community management as well as discussion culture, incivility and hate speech online.

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Marc, together with Anke Stoll, lend his thematic expertise as part of a workshop on online moderation, where participants discussed examples of successful online moderation practices and the potential of automation and AI support for implementing such moderation practices on digital platforms. Both Marc and Anke will return to THE NEW INSTITUTE in 2024 for a follow-up workshop.

  • Anke Stoll

    stayed: 13-17.11.2023

    Anke Stoll works at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the Technical University Ilmenau. Her research focuses on the use of AI in media contexts and social media, as well as machine learning methods for communication science.

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Anke, together with Marc Ziegele, was part of a workshop on online moderation, where participants discussed examples of successful online moderation practices and the potential of automation and AI support for implementing such moderation practices on digital platforms. Both Marc and Anke will return to THE NEW INSTITUTE in 2024 for a follow-up workshop.

  • Lone Sorensen

    stayed: 19.02.-1.03.2024

    Lone Sorensen is Associate Professor of Political Communication at the University of Leeds. In her research, she explores communicative pathologies within liberal representative democracies, focusing on the intersection of political communication, social media, and political epistemology.

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Lone supported the Depolarization group with her expertise on interpersonal communication, especially in the UK context.

  • Mary Scudder

    Mary Scudder is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. She is an expert on empathy and listening in political communication and, amongst other publications, author of the two books “The Two Faces of Democracy: Decentering Agonism and Deliberation” and “Beyond Empathy and Inclusion: The Challenge of Listening in Democratic Deliberation.”

    At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Mary will support the Depolarization team with her expertise on “Democratic Listening” and how this concept can be utilized to foster productive debates in potentially polarizing social discourses.

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