6  Week 6: Polarization and Radicalization

This week we’re going to be looking at two key political outcomes often attributed to the influence of new digital domains: polarization and radicalization.

Polarization may refer to various outcomes. Most often, we’re referring to so-called “affective polarization;” i.e., dislike of opposing political groups.

Radicalization, meanwhile, refers to the progressive adoption of extreme political beliefs and—potentially—forms of behaviour. One common refrain here is that algorithmic influence leads users to consume ever more radical content. These have been popularized in journalistic articles such as this one.

6.1 Essential reading:

Allcott et al. (2020)

Ledwich and Zaitsev (2019)

6.2 Additional reading:

Waller and Anderson (2021)

6.3 Slides

Slides for this week are available here

Allcott, Hunt, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow. 2020. “The Welfare Effects of Social Media.” American Economic Review 110 (3): 629676. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20190658.

Ledwich, Mark, and Anna Zaitsev. 2019. “Algorithmic Extremism: Examining YouTube’s Rabbit Hole of Radicalization.” https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.1912.11211.

Waller, Isaac, and Ashton Anderson. 2021. “Quantifying Social Organization and Political Polarization in Online Platforms.” Nature 600 (7888): 264–68. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04167-x.