Conflict Framing

Political messaging, news coverage and advertising often contain conflict. Politicians use conflict framing when criticizing their opponents. The prevalence of this kind of communication and how these attacks are received by the public are big topics in political communication research. Apart from politicians themselves, traditional news media can also be biased in their coverage of political tensions. While empirical evidence is mixed,  it is often thought that mainly digital media plays a large role in the supposed polarization in society today. It is thought that selective exposure, either through self-selection or algorithms, leads people to become increasingly more convinced of their own views on societal problems and increasingly unreceptive to opinions from their political rivals.  Scholars also worry that topics easily become politicized in this (digital) media environment when topics that were previously uncontested are moved to the political sphere. An issue then also becomes more salient among the public and opinions more polarized.  

Research within this subtheme includes studies on the politicization of climate change communication, conflict framing in political communication on social media in particular and the ability of digital media to (de)polarize.