Social Media Use and Political Engagement in Polarized Times. Examining the Contextual Roles of Issue and Affective Polarization in Developed Democracies

Abstract

Studies addressing the normative questions of whether social media use positively or negatively affects citizens’ levels of democratic engagement and satisfaction with democracy have produced mixed findings. This study tests the proposition that political polarization plays an important contingent role in explaining these relationships. Combining Varieties of Democracy (VDEM) and World Values Survey (WVS) data, this study examines how issue polarization and affective polarization at the country level shape the relationships between social media use for political information and democratic outcomes in 27 developed democracies. The findings show divergent consequences of social media use contingent on affective polarization. In the countries with high affective polarization, social media use increased democratic engagement (i.e. participation and voting) and decreased satisfaction with democracy (i.e. political satisfaction and perceived quality of democracy), which may have implications for democratic erosion and backsliding. In the countries with low affective polarization, social media use increased the perceived quality of democracy but had no effect on political satisfaction. Issue polarization had a limited contingent influence. The findings contribute to the literature by explicating the dynamics of country-level affective polarization that can shape and contextualize the relationship between social media use and democratic engagement in democracies across the world.