And the final speaker in this IAMCR 2024 [5] session is Liu Youmeng, whose interest is also in the impact of social media on affective polarisation in the Chinese public sphere. Indeed, high-choice media environments may generally increase affective polarisation, and selective exposure to pro-attitudinal content may have a significant role to play here. Individuals’ perceptions about the underlying opinion climate may also affect this, however.

The project examined this through a representative nationwide survey of some 1,300 participants in China, assessing affective polarisation through a feeling thermometer and pro- and counter-attitudinal content exposure through self-reporting.

The results show that counter-attitudinal selective exposure can exacerbate affective polarisation; pro-attitudinal selective exposure was not significantly related to cross-cutting discussion, but counter-attitudinal exposure was; the relationship to like-minded discussion was the opposite. Like-minded discussion can exacerbate affective polarisation; counter-attitudinal discussion does not, but also only has a very limited depolarising effect. Incidental exposure to dissenting opinions did not tend to mitigate polarisation. The perceived opinion climate also affected such results, though.