Social Media and Political Polarization: A Panel Study of 36 Countries from 2014 to 2020

Jia Lu (), Meiqi Sun () and Zikun Liu ()
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Jia Lu: Tsinghua University
Meiqi Sun: Tsinghua University
Zikun Liu: Wuhan University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2025, vol. 178, issue 3, No 5, 1103-1124

Abstract: Abstract The rise of social media has attracted scholarly attention to its role in shaping political polarization. However, most of existing studies focused on examining how social media polarizes individual persons in a single country and ignored its impacts on society as a whole in different social contexts. We conduct a cross-country study to explore the country-level interaction between the process of political polarization and the social context, which is shaped by social media adoption, organization, censorship, and false information. Using the data from V-Dem and other sources, we analyze a panel sample of 36 OECD countries from 2014 to 2020. The results show that political polarization is positively related to social media censorship and false information. The connection between two waves of polarization is weakened by social media adoption but strengthened by social media organization. Drawing on social identity theory, we synthesize the findings and propose two theoretical routes to explain the influence of social media on political polarization.

Keywords: Social media; Political polarization; Adoption; Organization; Censorship; False information; Panel study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s11205-024-03367-y

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