The "Affective Feedback" Mechanisms of Social Media Platforms and Their Role in Channeling Affective Polarisation

To better understand the mechanisms underpinning affective polarisation (Iyengar et al., 2019; Wagner, 2021) in contemporary democracies, it is necessary to pay closer attention to how the affordances of the "digital public sphere" facilitate this tendency. While there have already been some studies exploring the nexus between social media and affective polarisation (Yarchi et al, 2021; Norbrandt, 2023) many of the factors which make social media particularly conducive to processes of affective polarisation have not yet been fully clarified. Thus far, the debate on this issue has focused on the way in which social media’s partisan sorting and selective exposure effects reinforce affective polarisation (Törnberg, 2022). However, other affordances of social media arguably play a more important role. In this presentation, I propose to advance this research agenda, by highlighting how a key element favouring affective polarisation dynamics lies in the prominence of social media “affective feedback” mechanisms, and the way in which they contribute to processes of emotional amplification and reinforcement which can boost affective polarisation. To this end, I concentrate on the role played by various social media reactions – ranging from simple like buttons, to more complex emotional reactions, emojis and “gifts”, as well as more complex textual replies, used on various platforms and the way in which they can be used as means of emotional amplification (Collins, 2014). Empirically, I shall use as case study the social communication of right-wing populist leader in Europe and the way in which they are used by political leaders as a means to elicit incendiary emotional responses from their supporters, which can feed processes of opinion reinforcement and radicalisation. In this sense it is not just exposure to content a such, but the forms of “micro-participation” embedded in social media campaigning what allows ordinary users to express their belonging to a given campaign, party and movement, what is particularly conducive to affective polarisation. My argument shall be that these communicative features are particularly powerful affective transmission mechanisms because of their ability to create a sense of dialogue between leaders and followers and of antagonism vis-à-vis the opposite camp, and this potential has only been redoubled in connection with the rise of new video-sharing platforms such as TikTok. I shall continue arguing that these affective feedback mechanisms are particularly important to understand affective polarisation because they are the source of “digital listening” (Karpf, 2016) practices by means of which political leaders and their teams, constantly gauge the feelings temperature of their target publics. By iteratively adapting their message in order to maximise “key performance indicators” (many of which are either directly or indirectly affective) can lead to “emotional spirals”, which in some circumstances can precipitate in violent events (as seen in the race riots in the UK in the summer of 2024). The presentation will conclude with some remarks on how affective polarisation debate can draw useful insights from studies of online mobilisation, and in turn affective polarisation theory can give a more sophisticated theoretical grounding to this research.