The Polarizing Effect of a Twitter Post: Investigating the Effects of Highlighted Right-Wing Populist Statements in Political News Coverage

In recent years, journalists have developed the practice of highlighting provocative statements of populist politicians by embedding their Twitter posts in regular news coverage. Research in social and political psychology suggests that such highlighting may increase confirmation and disconfirmation bias, thus stimulating opinion polarization. Confirmation bias describes the phenomenon that individuals prefer to seek and elaborate information which is consistent with their attitudes. Disconfirmation bias assumes that individuals may also react especially strong to political information which is highly incongruent with their attitudes, such as by mentally defending their initial attitudes and denigrating the encountered arguments. To test this notion, we conducted an online experiment with five experimental groups (quota sample, N=379). We exposed participants to two articles, each including a provocative right-wing populist statement related to immigration by the Austrian former presidential candidate Norbert Hofer. The content of the statements and the news articles were the same across groups. However, the presentation style of the statements in the news articles varied across groups: Group 1 (control group) saw the statements as quotes in the running text. Group 2 saw the statements as highlighted quotes amid the running text without a candidate image. Group 3 saw the same as group 2 but with a a candidate image added. Group 4 saw the statements as Twitter posts without a candidate image. Group 5 saw the same Twitter posts but with a candidate image in the posts. This allowed us to distinguish between different highlighting strategies (image, Twitter frame). We assessed individuals’ ideology as an indicator of pre-exposure agreement with the right-wing populist statement before the stimulus exposure. After exposure, we assessed how well the respondents recognized the content of the two statements with four knowledge questions (recognition test). Furthermore, respondents evaluated Norbert Hofer (feelings thermometer) and reported their attitudes toward immigrants. Results revealed that group 3, 4 and 5 significantly increased statement recognition among citizens with left ideology, providing evidence for a disconfirmation bias among leftists. Though not significant, the effect of group 2 pointed in the same direction. The treatments effects turned negative for far-right individuals, but failed to reach statistical significance. In a second step, we found that statement recognition had a negative effect on both candidate evaluation and anti-immigrant attitudes for individuals with left-wing ideology and a positive effect for individuals with right-wing ideology. Moderated mediation analysis revealed that exposure to highlighted statements strengthened attitudes via statement recognition among individuals at the far left (except for group 2), that is, they further decreased their evaluation of Hofer and their anti-immigrant attitudes. Taken together, the study indicates that highlighting provocative (e.g., populist) statements in political news coverage may increase disconfirmation bias among individuals who may strongly disagree with the content of the statement. By contrast, we do not find evidence for an increased confirmation bias. Against the common belief, it is thus not only partisan news which may polarize public opinion, but also journalists’ frequently used practice to present provocative and extreme statement in a highly visible way.