Model Suggests Digital Media Contributing to “Maelstrom” of Societal Division

Regular users of social media platforms are well aware that they often produce toxic discourse. Scholars continue to produce results that bring clarity to the mechanisms by which digital and social media exacerbate partisan and identity-based conflict. A better understanding is crucial for keying in on what platforms should be held responsible for, devising better policy, and potentially designing solutions. 

A new peer-reviewed paper from Petter Törnberg, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, contributes to this understanding by developing a computational model that “suggests that digital media polarize through partisan sorting, creating a maelstrom in which more and more identities, beliefs, and cultural preferences become drawn into an all-encompassing societal division.”