The Connection of News Consumption and Affective Polararization

This bachelor thesis examines how different forms of political media use correlate with the extent of affective polarization among the German population. The central question is whether people who obtain their information from social media, among other sources, or exclusively from social media, exhibit higher affective polarization than people who use only traditional sources of information such as television, radio, or newspapers. It also examines whether a greater variety of media sources used is associated with lower affective polarization. The data is based on the Berlin Polarization Monitor, a questionnaire on polarization in Germany that is conducted repeatedly. Affective polarization is measured using the “issue thermometer” for three political topics: climate change, asylum, and the Middle East. For each topic, the emotional distance between opposing opinion groups is calculated on a scale from 0 (negative, cold) to 10 (positive, warm) and then summarized by calculating the mean value to obtain a measure of affective polarization across all three topics. The central independent variable is political media consumption. Media consumption for political information is measured using seven checkbox items from the Berlin Polarization Monitor (News Consumption v014a–g), in which respondents indicate whether they use certain media sources. Traditional media are represented by television/media libraries, daily newspapers/e-papers, radio/web radio, and news sites/apps (v014a–d), while social media are measured via social networks and video portals (v014e–f). Messenger services (v014g) are only taken into account in terms of media diversity, but are not counted solely as social media, as their characteristics deviate from the definition of social media. For hypothesis H1, a variable is formed that distinguishes two groups from each other. The first group comprises people who use at least one social medium in addition to traditional media or exclusively social media for political information. The second group consists of people who obtain information exclusively from traditional media. For H2, media diversity is recorded as the sum of all selected information sources for variables v014a to v014g. The value range is between 0 and 7. Higher values represent greater diversity in media consumption. Linear regression models are used for data analysis to examine whether the source of information and media diversity are systematically related to the measure of affective polarization, with the age of the respondents taken into account as a control variable. By controlling for Age, it is therefore possible to investigate whether the relationship between media use and affective polarization exists independently of age-related differences. In addition, the item “Political Interest” is included as a covariate. A positive correlation between social media use and affective polarization is expected, as well as a negative correlation between greater media diversity and affective polarization. This work contributes to our understanding of how digital publics influence political attitudes and emotional responses to opposing political groups. The results may provide clues as to whether certain media environments tend to promote or hinder democratic dialogue and whether a broader media information base represents a possible counterweight to polarization.