A talk with researcher Emily Kubin (twitter: @emily_kubin) about her and Christian von Sikorski’s recent study reviewing more than 100 studies on how social media may be affecting political polarization. Their paper is called “The role of (social) media in political polarization: a systematic review.” We discuss her research, why polarization is a problem in the first place, why people can be resistant to thinking that polarization is a problem, the two different types of polarization (affective and ideological), our psychology tendency to become us-versus-them in our thinking, her own opinions on what social media is doing to us, and the mechanisms by which social media may be amplifying polarization.
Episode links:
- iTunes (embedded below)
- Spotify
- Google Play
Related resources:
- Emily Kubin’s Google Scholar page
- Emily Kubin’s work she mentioned: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts
- Zach Elwood’s piece on social media’s inherent effects on polarization
- If you liked this episode, please check out the other People Who Read People episodes on related topics (like this one on how Facebook increases polarization).