Maintenance or change? Examining the reinforcing spiral between social media news use and populist attitudes

Abstract

Citizens around the world increasingly express support for populism. Here, we apply the reinforcing spirals model to examine whether, and how, social media news use shapes populist attitudes over time. Specifically, we assess if using social media as a news source serves to maintain existing populist attitudes or facilitates a shift in attitudes to a more extreme position. A cross-sectional survey (N 1 = 195) highlighted a positive correlation between social media news use and populist attitudes. A four-wave longitudinal survey (N 2 = 386) further showed that this relationship reflects media and selection effects. Over a period of three months, more frequent social media news use predicted stronger populist attitudes at subsequent measuring points. In addition, higher levels of populist attitudes were related to more frequent social media news consumption in the following waves. However, the frequency of social media news use did not change over time and populist attitudes did not become stronger during the study period. Taken together, the findings indicate that social media news use contributed to the maintenance of populist attitudes at a stable level. There is no evidence to suggest social media news use predicted more extreme populist attitudes. We discuss these results with respect to the (potentially continued) rise of populism; we also critically reflect on the phenomenon of attitude polarization online.

Populist Attitudes Predict Compliance-Related Attitudes and Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic Via Trust in Institutions

“…Therefore, this research fills a critical gap in previous research by linking populist attitudes with compliance-related attitudes (i.e., acceptance) and behaviors (i.e., compliance with social distancing and hand hygiene) during the COVID-19 pandemic while including trust in institutions as a potential mediator in this relationship. Further, populists tend to be skeptical of media, political, and scientific elites (Eberl et al, 2021; Schindler et al, 2018; Schulz et al, 2020) and show an affinity for alternative information sources (Müller & Schulz, 2021; Schumann et al, 2021). Therefore, we investigated the mediating role of trust in four different institutions: trust in (a) alternative and (b) mainstream news media, (c) political, and (d) scientific institutions.…”

“…Eberl et al (2021) showed that stronger populist attitudes were associated with less trust in political and scientific institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, populist attitudes are associated with an affinity to alternative information sources (Müller & Schulz, 2021; Schumann et al, 2021) and perceiving mainstream media as hostile (Schulz et al, 2020). Accordingly, the findings from the COVID-19 pandemic showed that alternative news media reported “on the crisis in the form of pandemic populism” (Boberg et al, 2020, p. 17), catering to populists by sharing overly critical messages opposing the view of mainstream news media and the political establishment.…”

A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy

“…Overall, articles using panel surveys, tracking data and methods linking surveys to social media data consistently found that digital media use was associated with higher levels of populism. For example, digital platforms were observed to benefit populist parties more than they benefit established politicians [131][132][133][134] . In a panel survey in Germany, a decline in trust that accompanied increasing digital media consumption was also linked to a turn towards the hard-right populist AfD party 80 .…”

Do social media undermine social cohesion? A critical review

“…In general, very few studies have credibly identified the effect of social media use on attitudes, perceptions, or beliefs. Many studies have correlated social media use with various attitudes (e.g., Lee et al, 2014;Schumann et al, 2021)], yet concerns over omitted variable bias loom large. For instance, those who use social media more, particularly when researchers began studying its purported effects (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014), were more likely to be wealthier and more educated than those who used it less, and we know that both of these variables are correlated with more polarized attitudes (Perrin, 2015).…”