Student Research Guide WQ24/ Twitter and the Polarization of Society

• Buchanan, Kathryn, et al. "Brief exposure to social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: Doom-scrolling has negative emotional consequences, but kindness-scrolling does not." Plos one 16.10 (2021): e0257728.
  • Kathryn Buchanan works in the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex, United Kingdom. This study goes over the different psychological effects of exposure to different types of digital media and news. I will use this article to show that Twitter itself isn’t inherently bad at all, it’s how people manipulate it that is. The best method to get around the current social media crisis is to be more mindful of how we use it and set more rules against misinformation.

• Civility in Politics. 22 Feb. 2011. Issues & Controversies, https://icof.infobase.com/articles/QXJ0aWNsZVRleHQ6MTYyMDE=?aid=102912. Accessed 29 Jan. 2023.

  • This article was published by Issues & Controversies, a specialized research database designed to assist researchers in comprehending contemporary critical issues with reasoning from both sides of the discussion. This article covers the nature of civility in politics, its necessity, and goes over the history of inflammatory political discussion in America. It’ll be used in my paper to outline how discourse has been used and viewed before and after Twitter.

• Hameleers, Micheal. “On the Ordinary People’s Enemies: How Politicians in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands Communicate Populist Boundaries via Twitter and the Effects on Party Preferences.” Political Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell), vol. 136, no. 3, Fall 2021, pp. 487–519. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.skagit.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/polq.13235.
  • In circulation since 1886, Political Science Quarterly offers a diverse array of articles and book reviews covering topics related to government, politics, public policy, and international relations, both within the United States and globally. This article discusses how politicians appeal to the masses and abuse the Twitter systems with misinformation to spread their agenda.

• Heatley Tejada, A., R. I. M. Dunbar, and M. Montero. "Physical contact and loneliness: being touched reduces perceptions of loneliness." Adaptive human behavior and physiology 6 (2020): 292-306. Ana Heatley Tejada has a PhD in Psychology and works as a gender and data coordinator at Oxfam Mexico.

  • This article explores the link between loneliness and physical touch, emphasizing insights from evolutionary and psychological research that highlight the crucial role of touch in building bonds and communicating emotions. This will be used to demonstrate how Twitter is not a good substitute for physical contact and the undertones of physical discourse.

• Huszár, Ferenc, et al. "Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119.1 (2022): e2025334119.
  • Ferenc Huszár has a PhD in Baysian machine learning from the Cambridge Engineering Department. This article covers Twitter’s algorithms and how they affect political discourse.

• Krittanawong, Chayakrit, et al. "Misinformation dissemination in twitter in the COVID-19 era." The American journal of medicine 133.12 (2020): 1367-1369.

  • This article was published by Chayakrit Krittanawong, an MD at the Baylor College of Medicine, along with six other authors with extensive medical backgrounds. The article covers how Twitter was a catalyst for the mass misinformation wave during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be used to discuss how Twitter can have a domino effect, in that, if an uneducated person is just loud enough, some people are bound to believe them, and then over time something completely untrue can become “common knowledge.” 

• Mason, Lilliana. "A cross-cutting calm: How social sorting drives affective polarization." Public Opinion Quarterly 80.S1 (2016): 351-377.
  • Lilliana Mason is an assistant professor in the Government and Politics Department, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. This article discusses the association of character traits with political ideologies and how if we judge a person’s character to be bad, we judge all their beliefs the same.
• Papadopoulos, Chris, John Foster, and Kay Caldwell. "'Individualism-Collectivism' as an Explanatory Device for Mental Illness Stigma." Community Mental Health Journal, vol. 49, no. 3, 2013, pp. 270-80. ProQuest, https://skagit.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/individualism-collectivism-as-explanatory-device/docview/1403481346/se-2, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-012-9534-x.
  • John Foster works at the University of of Greenwich, London. This article goes over the differences between cultures that stigmatize and commend mental illness discussion and their correlation to individualism and collectivism.
• Social Media and Mental Health. 11 May 2023. Issues & Controversies, https://icof.infobase.com/articles/QXJ0aWNsZVRleHQ6MTYyNTU=?aid=102912. Accessed 29 Jan. 2023.
  • This article was published by Issues & Controversies, a specialized research database designed to assist researchers in comprehending contemporary critical issues with peer-reviewed reasoning from both sides of the discussion. This article covers all aspects of the affects social media has on the mind and our perception of the world. It has a lot of useful information so I will be using it throughout my paper but it’s main purpose is to demonstrate how Twitter radicalizes people.

• Törnberg, Petter. "How digital media drive affective polarization through partisan sorting." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119.42 (2022): e2207159119.

  • This article was written by Petter Törnberg who works for the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam. This article discusses polarization in politics and how the exposure to the multitude of opinions outside our own that digital media brings goes directly against our evolutionary psychology.

1. "Twitter" AND "Polarization"

2. "Social Media" AND "Radicalization"

3. "Partisan Sorting"

4. "Tribalism" AND "Digital Media"

5. "Brain Evolution" AND "Internet"