Greater Internet use is not associated with faster growth in political polarization among US demographic groups
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We combine eight previously proposed measures to construct an index of political polarization among US adults. We find that polarization has increased the most among the demographic groups least likely to use the Internet and social media. Our overall index and all but one of the individual measures show greater increases for those older than 65 than for those aged 18-39. A linear model estimated at the age-group level implies that the Internet explains a small share of the recent growth in polarization.
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Diversos estudios cuestionan que la comunicación digital sea una causa explicativa destacada de la polarización.
“En el caso de Internet y las redes sociales, diversos estudios cuestionan que la comunicación digital sea una causa explicativa destacada de la polarización (Boxell et al., 2017;Waisbord, 2020).”
From Política, uso de medios y polarización afectiva en España (2024) · cites this paper as Boxell et al., 2017
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- Authors
- Boxell, L., Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. M.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-09-19
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 40
- Pages
- 10612-10617
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5635884
- OpenAlex
- W2756230309
- Cited by
- 467
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 32 · 2025: 50 · 2024: 38 · 2023: 75 · 2022: 65 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 81 · 2019: 50 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 4 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 100.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2018-01-08)
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (NA)
- NIH (P2C HD041020)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Keywords
- political polarization, internet use, social media use, demographic groups, age differences, older adults, polarization index, political attitudes, United States
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Models, Theoretical, Politics, United States, Information Dissemination, Social Media
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