ABSTRACT

Citizens around the world increasingly express support for populism. Here, we apply the reinforcing spirals model to examine whether, and how, social media news use shapes populist attitudes over time. Specifically, we assess if using social media as a news source serves to maintain existing populist attitudes or facilitates a shift in attitudes to a more extreme position. A cross-sectional survey (N₁ = 195) highlighted a positive correlation between social media news use and populist attitudes. A four-wave longitudinal survey (N₂ = 386) further showed that this relationship reflects media and selection effects. Over a period of three months, more frequent social media news use predicted stronger populist attitudes at subsequent measuring points. In addition, higher levels of populist attitudes were related to more frequent social media news consumption in the following waves. However, the frequency of social media news use did not change over time and populist attitudes did not become stronger during the study period. Taken together, the findings indicate that social media news use contributed to the maintenance of populist attitudes at a stable level. There is no evidence to suggest social media news use predicted more extreme populist attitudes. We discuss these results with respect to the (potentially continued) rise of populism; we also critically reflect on the phenomenon of attitude polarization online.

摘要

世界各地的公民越来越多地表达对民粹主义的支持。在这里，我们应用强化螺旋模型来检验社交媒体新闻的使用是否以及如何随着时间的推移塑造民粹主义态度。具体来说，我们评估使用社交媒体作为新闻来源是否有助于维持现有的民粹主义态度或促进态度转变为更极端的立场。一项横断面调查 ( N ₁  = 195) 强调了社交媒体新闻使用与民粹主义态度之间的正相关关系。四波纵测（N ₂ = 386) 进一步表明，这种关系反映了媒体和选择的影响。在三个月的时间里，更频繁的社交媒体新闻使用预示着随后的测量点会出现更强的民粹主义态度。此外，更高水平的民粹主义态度与后续浪潮中更频繁的社交媒体新闻消费有关。然而，社交媒体新闻的使用频率并没有随着时间的推移而改变，民粹主义态度在研究期间也没有变得更强烈。总之，调查结果表明，社交媒体新闻的使用有助于将民粹主义态度维持在稳定的水平。没有证据表明社交媒体新闻的使用预示着更极端的民粹主义态度。我们就民粹主义的（可能持续的）兴起来讨论这些结果；