Political polarization and misinformation

Misinformation and politicized science can amplify ideological divisions through selective exposure to partisan media and motivated reasoning. People with strong pre-existing political beliefs often interpret competing information through an identity-protective lens, leading to "backfire effects" where corrections deepen polarization. However, recent evidence suggests depolarizing strategies exist: communicating consensus in certain ways, inoculating people preemptively against misleading tactics, and framing information in non-partisan ways can reduce polarization even on contentious issues.

Key papers

Community pathways and demographic sorting: - Sánchez-Cortés, Monti & De Francisci Morales (2026) — Conspiracy and Environment Communities on Reddit Sort Along Different Demographic Axes: reveals that political polarization operates through demographic pathways — different groups arrive at conspiracy communities through distinct information environments organized by gender and partisanship. Shows demographic sorting occurs upstream (before entry) for identity-expressive communities but downstream for issue-oriented ones.

Polarization and misinformation: - Farrell (2016) — Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change — demonstrates that corporate funding influences not just the production of polarizing discourse, but its actual thematic content; organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Koch foundations strategically emphasized different polarization frames (energy industry concerns, scientific skepticism) than unfunded organizations. - van der Linden et al. (2017) — Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change — tests whether consensus messaging and misinformation trigger identity-protective motivated reasoning; finds no backfire effect and shows inoculation is equally effective across Republican, Independent, and Democrat subgroups