From fleet street to Facebook

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of the Political Behaviour Colloquium features a presentation by a Kimberley Moran, Researcher in Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) of the University of Oxford.

Many pundits blame social media platforms for rising political polarisation, greater incivility, and undermining democracy. Yet evidence suggests that political polarisation has been increasing since the 1970s in the United States, predating these platforms by thirty years. This study seeks to holistically evaluate the changing media ecosystem through an experimental design that incorporates both choice – to account for selective exposure – and random assignment – to expose participants to media they would not choose to read, while also exposing all participants to similar content. Participants who believed they were exposed to opposing media perceived the content as less trustworthy, ideologically opposed to their views, and more politically polarising. Focusing on specific outlets, participants were less likely to trust Facebook – even among those who preferred Facebook – and were more likely to perceive it as more polarising than The Guardian or the Telegraph, but only when the topic was politically polarising.

The Zoom link will be sent upon registration.