GEORGIA STATE RESEARCHERS ON THE FACTORS DRIVING POLARIZATION AND EXTREMISM IN AMERICA — AND WHAT IT WOULD TAKE TO SET THE COUNTRY ON A DIFFERENT COURSE.
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Georgia State researchers on the factors driving polarization and extremism in America — and what it would take to set the country on a different course.
Thousands of people gathered at the Ellipse on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 for a rally called “Save America.” The event took place just as a joint session of Congress was counting electoral votes to formalize then President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election. Around noon, President Donald Trump took the stage. “Everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” he said.
Hundreds of rally-goers did go to the Capitol, but not all were peaceful, with many breaking through police barriers, cracking windows and rushing the halls of Congress. Some attacked police, some stole an assortment of items, some just filmed with their smartphones and left. The electoral vote count was delayed by several hours as members of Congress fled the rioters.
Thousands of people gathered at the Ellipse on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 for a rally called “Save America.” The event took place just as a joint session of Congress was counting electoral votes to formalize then President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election. Around noon, President Donald Trump took the stage. “Everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” he said.
Hundreds of rally-goers did go to the Capitol, but not all were peaceful, with many breaking through police barriers, cracking windows and rushing the halls of Congress. Some attacked police, some stole an assortment of items, some just filmed with their smartphones and left. The electoral vote count was delayed by several hours as members of Congress fled the rioters.
More than 250 people have since been charged with crimes related to the Capitol breach. The next day, then Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described what happened at the Capitol as “an insurrection against the United States.”
Whatever you call the events of Jan. 6, Georgia State experts say it was a culmination of deep political polarization and pervasive acceptance of conspiracy theories and extremist views. An NPR analysis found that nearly 20 percent of those arrested had ties to extremist or fringe groups like QAnon or the Proud Boys.
“What we saw at the Capitol was really a long time coming,” says Tony Lemieux, a professor of communication who studies how propaganda drives radicalization.
Distrust in both the media and elections have been building for years, he says, and “when you put those together, you’ve got a really compelling case that violence might occur.”
Lemieux is one of several Georgia State faculty who have been studying the causes of domestic polarization and radicalization for years. Many are part of the university’s Transcultural Conflict and Violence (TCV) Initiative, which brings together researchers from disciplines that include communication studies, psychology, sociology, political science and computer science in order to understand the causes of — and develop solutions to — conflict and violence that happens across borders or other types of boundaries.
“Politically motivated acts of violence aren’t some totally new phenomena for those of us who’ve been researching and following this space for years,” says Lemieux. “This is not going away.”
THE RESEARCHERS
From left to right: John Horgan, professor of psychology, Tony Lemieux, professor of communication, Jennifer McCoy, professor of political science, Dror Walter, assistant professor of communication, and Carol Winkler, professor of communication.
“In some ways, polarization can be good,” says Dror Walter, assistant professor of communication. “For the functioning of a good democratic society, you need some kind of disagreement in order to keep the political process moving.”
The problem, he says, comes when two sides go beyond simply disagreeing about political or cultural issues. “Affective polarization” refers to negative sentiment towards one’s political opponents, and it erodes our ability to cooperate and work together for the common good. An accumulation of antipathy can also lead to rule-breaking and even violence aimed at members of the other party.
This deeper — and deeply unhealthy — form of polarization makes America vulnerable to nefarious outside influences, says Walter, who has researched the impact of online interference in U.S. politics by foreign actors. In one study, he and his co-authors analyzed nearly three million tweets sent over three years by the Internet Research Agency, a known Russian troll farm. They found that Russians’ troll accounts on Twitter were using political polarization to spread disinformation and sow discord within the American public.
“They would (and do) create accounts with political identities that were somewhat consistent with real-life liberals or conservatives, so it looks like the account is run by, say, a Trump supporter or a Trump hater,” he says.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, these accounts have expressed pro- or anti-vaccine preferences depending on the identity they were purporting to represent. Walter says issues like vaccine hesitancy, which on the surface may seem to be apolitical, are often “casualties of war” brought about by disinformation campaigns.
“They’re building on our preconceived notions about who is supporting vaccines and who is anti-vaccine. This can exacerbate polarization, but it can also make use of polarization to achieve other propaganda goals,” he says. “Foreign interference can also increase polarization by fueling greater animosity. It’s a dangerous cycle.”
It’s not just interference on social media that can drive false narratives in the U.S. In a paper published last year, Lemieux and colleagues — Allison E. Betus, a Craigie International Security Scholar and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication, and Erin M. Kearns, a former Georgia State postdoctoral Fellow now at the University of Alabama — studied print news coverage of all terrorist attacks in the U.S. from 2006 to 2015. They found that while only 16 percent of the attacks covered by U.S. newspapers were perpetrated by Muslims, more than three-quarters of all articles about terrorism focused on these incidents. That kind of imbalanced coverage can fuel prejudice while discounting the danger of other groups.
“Domestic terrorism in the U.S. is more complex than media coverage would suggest, with ongoing threats from a number of different extremist groups,” he says. “There are policy implications when we overemphasize perpetrators who line up with our own biases and beliefs while ignoring others.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned last fall that white supremacist groups were the “most persistent and lethal threat” in the nation. Male supremacist groups, which share the same ideology of hate, are also a rising danger. But not all members of these groups commit violent acts. What makes some people vulnerable to violent radicalization?
Psychology professor John Horgan studies what causes people to become involved in terrorism, and in 2019 he received a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to research the spread of the incel—or involuntary celibates—movement, a growing online male supremacist subculture.
The Anti-Defamation League defines incels as “heterosexual men who blame women and society for their lack of romantic success” and they have been responsible for several deadly attacks in the U.S. and in other countries. Horgan and his team are studying the group’s activity and what drives some incels to perpetrate terrorism, including what role the Internet plays in fomenting violence and hate.
“We are interested in understanding the differences, if any, between those incels who have committed acts of targeted violence versus the overwhelming majority of incels who do not,” says Horgan. “We are trying to determine if there was anything in the backgrounds, words or deeds of those attackers that might help us understand why they acted out against others.”
To uncover these differences, Horgan and his team are analyzing known cases of incel violence as well as manifestos and statements by violent and nonviolent incels. This type of data could eventually help experts identify who is likely to commit violence and develop effective interventions.
“By understanding how these attitudes develop and what the red flags are, we can help prevent further violence from taking place,” says Horgan.
“To actively try to unify, to lower the temperature, to stop using divisive, demonizing ‘us versus them’ language is key. To say, ‘I’m going to govern on behalf of everyone,’ and to try to unify around universal values.”
— Jennifer McCoy, political science professor
“To actively try to unify, to lower the temperature, to stop using divisive, demonizing ‘us versus them’ language is key. To say, ‘I’m going to govern on behalf of everyone,’ and to try to unify around universal values.”
— Jennifer McCoy, political science professor
Partisan antipathy in the U.S. has led many Americans to believe they are facing a threat from within their own country. Lemieux’s research shows that narratives of grievance — such as being told over and over, “if you don’t do something you are going to lose your country” — can create an atmosphere for political extremism to thrive.
“It doesn’t lend itself to measured political dialogue,” he says. “It becomes about the other side being inherently evil and fundamentally bad for the country. How do you negotiate with that? How do you try to find common ground with someone that you’ve cast as evil?”
Political science professor Jennifer McCoy says as Americans’ partisan identities have become a social identity, it’s led to what she calls “pernicious polarization,” which expands the divide into all kinds of social relations and creates a zero-sum view of politics.
“People have sorted into political parties so that their different identities and attitudes line up into a single partisan identity,” she says. “Today, Americans also don’t interact much with people in other parties. When we’re not communicating, if we feel anxious or threatened in any way, it’s easier to become suspicious and distrustful of the other side.”
McCoy, who studies political polarization and its effects on democracy in countries around the world, has seen it destroy other countries. It’s also eroding democracy in the U.S., according to international groups like V-Dem Institute and the Economist Intelligence Unit. These groups measure democracy based on factors like electoral integrity, freedom of the press, civil liberties and toxic levels of polarization.
Mistrust of government or losing faith in elections can result in political apathy or disengagement — for example, citizens may be less likely to turn out to vote. But pernicious polarization can lead people to believe that elections are life or death events. The other party wins. Life as you know it is over. These kinds of perceptions can increase challenges to democratic norms, as people try to keep their own group in power at all costs. They also can lead to violence, especially if rhetoric from politicians or other leaders is aimed at stoking fear and resentment.
“It’s one thing to have a set of different opinions and disagreements,” McCoy says. “It’s another thing entirely when you start to see those who hold those other positions as lesser, as anti-American or as people who want to destroy the country that you love.”
Is there a cure for what ails us? In an essay published in January 2021 titled “Overcoming Polarization,” McCoy and her collaborator Murat Somer of Koç University in Istanbul offer some lessons for societies trapped into two mutually distrustful camps. One is addressing the legitimate grievances, such as poverty and economic inequality, that can fuel resentment and “outrage” politics. Another lesson: recognizing that removing a polarizing political figure from office does not end polarization.
In order to fully overcome pernicious polarization, she says, you must practice active depolarization.
“To actively try to unify, to lower the temperature, to stop using divisive, demonizing ‘us versus them’ language is key,” she says. “To say, ‘I’m going to govern on behalf of everyone,’ and to try to unify around universal values.”
Although campaigns based around depolarization are difficult to implement, McCoy’s research has found some candidates have been successful in other countries.
“In Turkey and Hungary, for example, candidates for mayors of the capital cities have used a unifying message of hope and love and bringing people together,” she says. “Rather than demonizing the opponent, they emphasized the positive — and they won.”
It’s a strategy that McCoy says President Biden is also attempting, although she believes Biden and other leaders will have a difficult time depolarizing the U.S. in its current state.
“With income inequality continuing to grow, with racial inequities in health and education, and with our country struggling to address the pandemic, it keeps us stuck in the same cycle,” she says. “When politics becomes deeply divided in a way that speaks to our identity and our grievances, democracy is in a dangerous place.”
EXTREMISTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA AREN’T GOING AWAY
Does kicking radical groups off the platforms really work?
“Extremist groups have very sophisticated strategies to target both local and global audiences,” says Carol Winkler, a professor of communication at Georgia State who leads the TCV Initiative.
What happens when their social media accounts and other online means of spreading ideas are taken down? Winkler has recently studied social media use by ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and how those groups have responded to pressure online.
“Our work on ISIS shows that online account takedowns correspond to changes in the groups’ visual messaging strategies,” says Winkler. “If they’re attacked online, they are more likely to display images of their offline successes.”
Winkler believes some of the lessons learned from studying international groups can be applied to domestic extremist groups. Online takedowns tend to slow down extremist groups and even eliminate some members that don’t return, she says.
“But the groups are still very resilient, and they do move to other channels,” she says.
Taking down a site like Parler, for instance, can slow down the efforts of groups that use it, but it won’t stop them from moving on to the next one.
“Eventually, they’ll find another online place to go,” Winkler says. “It’ll just take them a while to come back.”