https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2273-4043
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ABSTRACT
To what extent do online debates display features of political polarization and in how far does polarization pose a problem for democracy? We zoom in on affective polarization: the formation of societal groups with hostile feelings towards each other, arguing that affective polarization is particularly problematic for democracy if it features elements of political intolerance, which undermines key tenets of even the most conflict-prone theories of democracy. While affective polarization has been on the rise in several countries, Germany has been considered to be a country with low, and even declining levels of affective polarization. But does this still hold true during the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw a rapid rise in conspiracy theories? Based on a qualitative discourse analysis of online debates about Covid-19 on the Facebook platforms of a mainstream and a non-mainstream German media outlet, we find strong traces of affective polarization on both platforms, involving clear indications of political intolerance. Our findings suggest that the democratic discourse is threatened by the nature of online debates about Covid-19, and it is threatened not only by anti-rationalist conspiracists at the ideological extremes but also by the intolerance of more moderate rationalists at the centre of the political spectrum.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 According to OECD data, the confidence in the national government reached 65% in Germany in 2020, compared to an OECD average of around 50%. Similar to the trend in most other OECD countries, trust in the government in Germany declined during the first COVID-19 wave in 2020, yet at a somewhat lower rate as in many other OECD countries (OECD Citation2021).
2 See https://www.statista.com/statistics/1059426/social-media-usage-germany/ (accessed on 23 August 2022).
3 For the data on the overall reach of Süddeutsche Zeitung, see https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/381931/umfrage/reichweite-der-sueddeutschen-zeitung/. The number of Facebook subscribers refers to April 2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20200426173206/https://www.facebook.com/ihre.sz/ (both accessed on 23 August 2022).
4 See https://www.mediadb.eu/forum/zeitungsportraets/sueddeutsche-zeitung.html (accessed on 23 August 2022).
5 See https://deutsch.rt.com/uber-uns/ (accessed on 23 August 2022).