Does ideological polarisation mobilise citizens?

Extreme party animals: Effects of political identification and ideological extremity

“…Some research calls into question effects related to affective polarization and ideological extremity: Fiorina and Abrams (2008) found that both affective polarization and geographic homophily was lower than previously reported; studies from Ksiazkiewicz and Krueger (2017) and Luttig (2017) show that ideological extremity differences between Republicans and Democrats significantly reduce when taking into account individual differences as covariates; Mason (2015) found that issue position extremity was unrelated to political identification. Other research found significant and substantial differences in how affective polarization differs for Democrats versus Republicans: Boutyline and Willer (2017) found that more conservative and more ideologically extreme people were more homophilous in online communities than liberal and moderate people; Kleiner (2019) used macro‐level and multi‐level analyses to show that members of the far right become more politically active in divided social environments than members of the far left; Van Bavel and Pereira (2018) proposed an identity‐based model of political belief which suggests that political identities are the crucial filter by which political information is interpreted and, thus, conservatives and liberals interpret the same information in vastly different ways.…”

“…As specified by Mason (2018), political identities can often dictate ideological values, even beyond policies or systems of beliefs. Inevitably, intergroup conflict between partisans affects policymaking and law enforcement on national, state, and local levels while also impacting social interactions between political opponents and increasing stress on interpersonal and intrapersonal levels (Brandt et al, 2014; Chambers et al, 2012; Iyengar et al, 2012; Iyengar & Westwood, 2014; Kleiner, 2019; Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018). Determining what antecedents increase intergroup conflict is crucial towards preparing for outcomes of conflict between rival political parties, like disagreements between Republicans and Democrats on healthcare (e.g., Miller, 2020), pandemic response (e.g., Relman, 2020), and foreign intervention (e.g., Wise, 2020).…”

“…For example, Iyengar and Westwood (2014) found that party members discriminated against outgroup rivals implicitly and explicitly more than White Americans discriminated against Black Americans. Increased political discrimination effects are linked to more negative perceptions against political outgroups over the last 40 years (Fiorina & Abrams, 2008; Iyengar et al, 2012), a lack of social pressure to reduce hostile discrimination against political opponents (e.g., compared to social pressure and laws to reduce discrimination against racial and gender minorities; Brandt et al, 2014; Chambers et al, 2012; Mason, 2015), and the near‐constant salience of political identity due to the permanent state of modern political electioneering (Kleiner, 2019).…”

Determining Factors of Voters’ Participation in Local Elections of Community Head in Armenia

“…On the other hand, watching TV may be classified as a form of passive media consumption, because people usually accept the information received from TV and they do not make extra efforts to get that information. Whereas some researchers (Wilkins, 2000;McLeod et al, 1996) found that television use and newspaper use are positively associated with political participation in general, other studies found a negative association or no influence of television use on political participation (Norris, 1996;Viswanath et al, 1990;Kleiner, 2015;Muntean, 2015).…”

“…Awareness, TV-watching, reading newspaper A number of empirical studies (Biswas, Ingle & Roy, 2014;Kleiner, 2015) choose policy awareness through media consumption as one of the determinants of citizens' willingness to vote in elections. However, media consumption has 2 dimensions: active and passive.…”