Electronic Farewells in the Digital Age: Partisan Opinions and Discussion Manner on Facebook Upend Social Media Relationships

Sangwook Lee*, Yin Yang, Bu Zhong

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

Abstract

To examine how political differences on social media disrupt user relationships, we conduct two 2 (political disagreement vs. political agreement) × 2 (civil vs. uncivil discussion) between-subjects experiments, with adult and college student samples. The results show that political disagreement heightens feelings of uncomfortableness, which in turn increases the intention to engage in social media filtering actions. Discussion manner moderates the association between uncomfortableness and social media filtering intention in college students, but not in adults. Uncomfortableness positively predicts filtering intention with civil discussion, whereas uncivil discussion leads to higher social media filtering intention regardless of the level of uncomfortableness. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings, which have implications for the development of strategies aimed at mitigating the trends of political polarization.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Media Psychology
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2 Aug 2024

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Communication
  • Social Psychology
  • Applied Psychology

User-Defined Keywords

  • Social media filtering
  • political polarization
  • selective exposure
  • unfollowing
  • unfriending

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