16:50 - 18:30
P10-S263
Room: 1A.10
Chair/s:
Margit Tavits
Discussant/s:
Wayde Z.C. Marsh
Pathways to Polarization: Online Information-Seeking Among Political Extremists
P10-S263-4
Presented by: Alejandro De la fuente-Cuesta
Alejandro De la fuente-Cuesta 1, 3, Laia Castro 1, 3, Yuan Zhang 2, Frank Esser 2, Jihye Park 2, Pamina Syed Al 2, Michael Amsler 2
1 University of Barcelona
2 University of Zurich
3 Barcelona Supercomputing Center
Abstract- Do extremists on all ends of the political spectrum exhibit similar patterns of political information-seeking online? In recent years, social media and the Internet have been blamed for spreading toxic and extremist discourse. However, we still know very little about the pathways and types of information sources accessed by individuals who position themselves on the far ends of the left-right scale. In this paper, we examine the information consumption habits of individuals with different ideological leanings. Using panel survey data and web-tracking data from 893 individuals in Spain, collected one month before and after the 2023 General Election, we analyze all political content individuals were exposed to in newspapers (N≈10.000) and social media (N≈20.000) using Large Language Models (LLMs). Second, we analyze information pathways resorting to Markov chains, thereby identifying differential patterns among far-right, far-left, and the remaining population. Preliminary results indicate that far-right individuals consume more political content than the average respondent, accessing content from legacy media, extremist websites, and political influencers. Moreover, far-right individuals are more likely than the average user to turn to social media after visiting legacy or political sites or searching for political content on search engines, whereas far-left individuals tend to continue informing themselves through similar sources. These findings reveal that individual ideological differences can lead to information pathways with different potential to fuel polarization and hinder debate across political divides.
Keywords: Political information-seeking, Extremism, Information diets, Polarization

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