Project description
Unpacking the drivers of political polarisation
Political polarisation has intensified in many countries in recent decades, eroding social cohesion, increasing distrust in institutions, and fuelling violence against marginalised groups. Although social media is often blamed, the root causes and the internet’s specific role remain largely unexplored. The ERC-funded POLARIZE project aims to examine the technological and social factors driving political polarisation, its societal impacts, and potential solutions. The project will investigate how personalised search engine results shape users’ political views and assess the effects of paywalls on news consumption and information inequities. It will also explore how economic shifts contribute to social exclusion and conspiracy beliefs and evaluate whether perspective-taking interventions can help reduce ideological and ethnic tensions.
Objective
Political polarization has risen in many countries over the past decades and cross-party animosity now extends to previously non-partisan issues. Polarization is alarming as it undermines social cohesion, fuels distrust in institutions and violence against out-groups, and can even favor the emergence of conspiratorial beliefs. These cleavages also hinder intergroup cooperation, making it difficult to build the broad political support needed to tackle urgent social challenges.
Many have ascribed the rise in polarization to the Internet and social media, seen as disproportionately exposing individuals to like-minded content and people, thus further reinforcing their opinions. Yet, the causes of political polarization, and the role of the Internet, remain largely understudied, and few solutions have been proposed to reduce polarization and avert its direst consequences.
My project investigates the technological and social determinants of political polarization and its broader consequences for society, and explores possible ways to alleviate this problem. To this end, I tackle four distinct but intertwined questions. First, I examine the extent to which personalized search engine results expose users to divergent political content and affect their political views. Second, I study the extent to which the introduction of paywalls by online news outlets has affected users’ news consumption, information inequities, and ideological segregation. Third, I examine how technology-driven economic shocks that favor social exclusion and undermine workers’ identity influence beliefs in conspiracy theories. Finally, I study whether perspective-taking interventions can offer an effective tool for reducing ideological and ethnic tensions, and promoting intergroup cooperation.
My results will provide a unified framework for understanding the complex technological and social forces behind political polarization, and for formulating concrete policy recommendations on how to mitigate it.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences internet
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
08002 Barcelona
Spain
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