Political Polarization in Australia: A Case Study of Brushfires in Australia

Zhiwen Zheng () and Babita Bhatt ()
Additional contact information
Zhiwen Zheng: Australian National University
Babita Bhatt: Australian National University

A chapter in Causes and Symptoms of Socio-Cultural Polarization, 2022, pp 115-132 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The frequency and severity of bushfires have increased in the past decades across the globe. Despite the socio-economic and ecological devastation brought by the bushfires, there is a lack of serious actions preventing the risk of bushfire. We argue that this lack of action results from the political polarisation around the causes and mitigation strategies around the bushfire. Using the case study of 2019–2020 Australian bushfire, we specifically demonstrate the role of social media eco-chambers in reinforcing political affiliations and perpetuating extreme positions. Based on our analysis, we provide practical and theoretical insights on social media-induced political polarisation around climate change.

Keywords: Political polarisation; Bushfire; Climate change; Social media; Social cohesion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-16-5268-4_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811652684

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-5268-4_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().