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Abstract

This special issue explores connective democracy, a new theoretical approach to fighting and understanding political polarization and divisiveness online. Connective democracy asks scholars to think about solutions that bridge societal and political divides, particularly on social media. Our collection of six articles theorizes connective democracy and applies the theoretical concept to global situations, such as nurturing freedom of speech in Myanmar (Burma) and discussions of a new constitution in Chile. The articles in this special issue also consider how connective democracy is useful for understanding current problems related to polarization, such as misinformation and online vitriol, as well as how social media affordances support connective democracy. This body of work contributes to our understanding of how to deal with one of the most challenging problems facing democracy today, rampant polarization and divisiveness online.

Keywords

democracy social media politics divisiveness

Political divisiveness is one of the most insidious problems that many democracies are facing. Conservatives and liberals often consume news from different outlets, are exposed to varying streams of information, and gravitate to contrasting social media platforms (e.g. Hmielowski et al., 2020; Tucker et al., 2018; Vogels et al., 2021). They may disagree on the facts that they believe in, and consequently, have perceptual differences about reality itself (Jones, 2020). Divisiveness is also central to the propositions of far right and extremist political populist movements across the world, who frequently run on anti-establishment and anti-democratic ideology, utilizing xenophobia and nativism to conjure up a dangerous “other” (e.g. Cammaerts, 2018; Canovan, 1999; Mudde, 2004). Connected to this divisiveness, affective polarization—defined as antipathy for the political outgroup—is on the rise in the United States (Iyengar et al., 2019; Levendusky, 2018; Pew Research Center, 2023) and across the world (Hobolt et al., 2021; Torcal & Harteveld, 2025). This polarization has already shown signs of intensifying during the second presidency of Republican Donald J. Trump, who won the popular vote by the second narrowest margin in the last 60 years (Montanaro, 2024). Across the European Union, populism, which has been on the rise since the Great Recession of 2008, has emboldened extremist political parties (Noury & Roland, 2020). In France, lawmakers ousted their prime minister with a no confidence vote in December 2024 after just 91 days, sending the government into freefall (Marx & Beardsley, 2024). Around the same time, South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol briefly declared martial law to squash efforts to impeach him (Kim & Tong-Hyung, 2024). These are just a few examples of the societal tumult of today’s current moment of political divisiveness.

This special issue tackles this problem of political divisiveness through the theoretical framework of connective democracy, a new approach to facilitating productive democratic discourse that can help bridge divides between groups (Overgaard et al., 2021, 2022; N. J. Stroud & Masullo, 2020). Scholars at the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin conceived of the theoretical framework of connective democracy, which focuses on solutions to bridging societal and political divides (Masullo & Overgaard, 2021; Overgaard et al., 2021, 2022; N. J. Stroud & Masullo, 2020) rather than the origins and consequences of divisiveness, as other research has done (e.g. Bisgaard & Slothuus, 2018; Iyengar et al., 2019; Levendusky & Malhotra, 2016). Connective democracy “proposes how political adversaries can be brought together in ways that enact deliberation” (Overgaard et al., 2021, p. 862). Connective democracy “acknowledges that democracy is messy—sometimes very messy—and it accepts that political discussions are not always rational or civil but that does not necessarily negate their value” (Masullo & Overgaard, 2021, n.p.; see also Chen et al., 2019). Connective democracy advances tools and techniques that strengthen the social glue within societies. It seeks to promote empathy between people who profoundly disagree on significant issues of our time. This theoretical framework builds on research (Bennett & Segerberg, 2015) to conceptualize connectivity, as a “willingness to prioritize relationships over competitiveness and engage in conversation with one’s political adversaries to genuinely understand their viewpoints” (Overgaard et al., 2022, p. 864). This connectivity paves the way for bridging divides.

The six articles in this special issue include theoretical pieces that help us expand the conceptualization of connective democracy, articles that apply the concept to real-world problems, and empirical papers that use connective democracy as a framework. Our collection of articles theorizes what connective democracy means and applies the theoretical framework to global situations, such as nurturing freedom of speech in Myanmar (Burma) and discussions of a new constitution in Chile. The articles in this special issue also consider how connective democracy is useful for understanding current problems related to polarization, such as misinformation and online vitriol, as well as how certain social media affordances promote connective democracy. What unites these papers is that they center the role of social media in a democratic society and explore how connective democracy can be a tool to attack political divisiveness online. This body of work contributes to our understanding of how to deal with one of the most challenging problems facing democracy today—rampant affective polarization and divisiveness—particularly on social media. We begin by exploring the problems and consequences of political divisiveness. Then, we conceptualize in greater detail the antecedents and principles of connective democracy before highlighting each of the articles in this special issue and providing main takeaways of this special issue.

Political divisiveness

Before conceptualizing connective democracy in greater detail, it makes sense to more fully explain the problem that this approach tries to solve. Society has many types of divisiveness. Connective democracy specifically addresses political divisiveness, which is an umbrella term that reflects a variety of disconnects between liberals and conservatives, particularly across social media platforms. A central focus is affective polarization, the dislike or even hatred of the political outgroup members as people (Hobolt et al., 2021; Iyengar et al., 2019; Pew Research Center, 2023; Torcal & Harteveld, 2025). We focus on affective polarization because it has been increasing across multiple countries (Hobolt et al., 2021; Iyengar et al., 2019; Pew Research Center, 2023; Torcal & Harteveld, 2025), and, more importantly, affective polarization can lead to troubling real-world consequences (N. J. Stroud & Masullo, 2020). Affective polarization can lead people to be unwilling to talk to people with differing viewpoints, which can result in less-reasoned decisions (Gamson, 1996; Jacobs et al., 2009; Mutz, 2006). Among politicians, affective polarization can lead to gridlock, thwarting effective collaboration and governance (Hetherington & Rudolph, 2015; Jacobson, 2016). Affective polarization also drives families apart and can lead to calls for limiting the rights of certain people, encouraging extremist viewpoints, and even violence (Kalmoe & Mason, 2019; N. J. Stroud & Masullo, 2020). We specifically address affective polarization, not other forms of polarization, such as ideological or issue-based polarization that involve differences in opinion on political policies. We argue these differences on policy or issues are “normatively acceptable and, dare we say, even healthy in a democracy” (N. J. Stroud & Masullo, 2020, p. 155). Society benefits when people and elected officials have diverse viewpoints and are open to understanding others’ opinions. Democracies function best when citizens feel free to participate, are open to new ideas, and provide feedback to their elected officials while the news media holds power accountable (Dahl, 1998; N. J. Stroud & Masullo, 2020). What breaks down democracy is affective polarization, where people hate their outgroup members, rather than merely disagree with the outgroup’s beliefs.

Scholars have offered various explanations for the increasing affective polarization, including polarizing cues from elites (Bisgaard & Slothuus, 2018), negative political campaigns (Iyengar et al., 2019), media coverage and framing of issues (Levendusky & Malhotra, 2016), and the selection of like-minded media (N. J. Stroud, 2011) and social media platforms (Asimovic et al., 2021; Levendusky & Malhotra, 2016; Levy, 2021; Settle, 2018). This type of selective exposure is rooted in directional motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990), which proposes that people are motivated to find information that fits their worldview. It is worth noting that a study that analyzed online audience data found little evidence of selective exposure on social media (Nelson & Webster, 2017), while much other research using experiments or self-reported data have found support for the belief that people gravitate to like-minded content (Asimovic et al., 2021; Levendusky & Malhotra, 2016; Levy, 2021; Overgaard, 2024; Settle, 2018; N. J. Stroud, 2011; Tucker et al., 2018). Exposure to news and social media content, for instance, can shape people’s meta-perceptions, and then these meta-perceptions affect their attitudes toward the political out party (Overgaard, 2024). Exposure to political disagreement on social media also has been found to lead people to disconnect with those they disagree with (Zhang et al., 2022). One way this polarization can occur is when people with varying political beliefs interpret a political incident on social media through very different lenses, offering almost no common ground (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020). Another way this polarization can occur is through algorithms, the “black boxes” of social media (Diakopoulos & Koliska, 2017), that surface content that will elicit users’ attention. These algorithms could be trained to surface normatively valuable content (Masullo et al., 2022) rather than focus on attention, as they do now. A focus on attention can tend to promote negative content because it is eye catching (e.g. N. J. Stroud, 2017; Wu, 2016) and is more likely to receive greater engagement (N. J. Stroud et al., 2017; Watson et al., 2024). As a result, social media platforms inevitably reward polarizing content if their algorithms reward content with greater engagement (N. J. Stroud & Masullo, 2020).

Social media platforms became divided with Twitter and Facebook initially perceived as left-leaning (Jasser et al., 2021), while newer platforms, such as Truth Social and Gab (e.g. Shah et al., 2024), emerging as right-leaning alternatives. This created more divisions with liberals frequenting different social media platforms than conservatives and seeing contrasting realities. These schisms show signs of rapidly accelerating. Since Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, renamed it X, and dismantled much of the platforms’ safety protections, the platform has been steadily losing users and advertisers (Brown et al., 2024; Li, 2024). During Trump’s second campaign for president, Musk used X to amplify right-leaning viewpoints (Ortutay, 2024). In the week after the US election in November, 2024, BlueSky, the fledgling decentralized social network, saw a 1 million spike in users (Crowley & Walrath-Holdridge, 2024) as people tried to escape the misinformation and offensive posts on X. BlueSky’s user base increased from 14 million to 25 million in a month after the election (Crowley & Walrath-Holdridge, 2024), amplifying its potential role as a competitor to X and offering evidence of a cleaved virtual public sphere. Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in January 2025, announced changes to its platforms in the United States under the guise of promoting “free speech” and fighting “censorship.” These changes include drastically reducing content moderation operations, eliminating fact-checking, and allowing hate speech against marginalized groups, which will inevitably lead to more harm (Divon & Ong, 2025). Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.

Theory of connective democracy

The theory of connective democracy proposes how to bring divergent political adversaries together in ways that enact deliberative democracy, as well as a normatively valued goal on its own. The theory is based on the normative beliefs that democracy is a “way of living” (Dewey, 1888, p. 28), not merely a system of government. This way of living requires that people be connected by “shared experiences and a commitment to the common good” (S. R. Stroud, 2011, p. 15). Thus, connective democracy builds on deliberative democracy, which proposes that open, rational, inclusive discussions can help people understand others’ points of view (e.g. Fishkin, 2011; Jacobs et al., 2009) so that the type of democracy Dewey (1888) imagined can become reality. Connective democracy also aims to address some of the critiques of deliberative democracy, namely that the theory can be elitist and lead to reinforcing hegemonic beliefs (Maia et al., 2017) and that true deliberation is quite rare (Delli Carpini et al., 2004). Connective democracy addresses these critiques by focusing first on connectivity, the willingness to come together with political out-party members (Overgaard et al., 2022). Without this connectivity, deliberation cannot occur. The theory of connective democracy also challenges a core assumption of deliberative democracy, namely that people are always able to think rationally about politics and really consider others’ points of view (Overgaard et al., 2022) that cannot be taken for granted in today’s divisive political climate. Connective democracy has roots in Allport’s (1954) intergroup contact hypothesis, which posits that contact between divergent groups can cut down on stereotypes. Much research has shown support for this premise. Even relatively limited forms of contact—for example, if people see positive contact with their outgroup in the media—offer evidence of this effect (Wojcieszak & Warner, 2020; for a review, see Overgaard et al., 2021). Our research has found that some of the key predictors of connectivity, getting along with neighbors who differ politically and having cross-cutting conversations, are negatively correlated with affective polarization (Overgaard et al., 2022). Notably, connective democracy also holds space for people to make their own assessments about whether communicating with political opponents is advised. Connective democracy suggests that people need to unpack two issues: how open are both sides to actually listening and how damaging talking across differences could be to the discussants or their relationship (Overgaard et al., 2022). In other words, while connective democracy prioritizes connectivity, it also understands that people cannot continually be talking with political outgroups if it becomes exhausting, particularly for people from marginalized groups.

Overview of special issue

The goal of this special issue is to expand our conceptual, theoretical, and empirical understanding of how connective democracy can operate to help achieve the goal of bridging divides between people with varying political beliefs. We see these articles as a means to develop the connective democracy framework further, especially in relation to the persistent challenge of the spread of false and misleading information on social media. For example, in our lead article, “‘Corrective democracy?’ The relationship between correction of misinformation on social media and connective democratic norms,” Vraga and colleagues extended connective democracy to the realm of social media corrections of misinformation. Using a nationally representative sample of people in the United States right after the 2020 presidential election, Vraga and colleagues found that people most likely to correct misinformation on social media were those who supported political violence to achieve goals, not those who most believed in the ideals of connective democracy. These results undermine the belief that correction is a simple mechanism to counter misinformation and calls for a more nuanced scholarly approach.

In our second article, “Digital community centers of the 21^st century: Facebook groups as fora for connective democracy,” Thomsen and colleagues quantitatively mapped about 9000 Danish Facebook groups and conducted field studies with a subset of groups and interviews with a subset of group moderators. They found that these citizen-led Facebook groups have become what they call digital community centers, spaces where people enact civic behaviors much as they would in a physical community center. These Facebook groups support connective democracy by communicating norms and providing a training space for political participation.

In “The character of connection: Platform affordances and connective democracy,” Shugars and Ha compare conversations on Twitter to those on Reddit, finding that Reddit showed promise for enabling productive intergroup discussions that may foster connective democracy while Twitter discussions were highly polarizing. They also theorize that “community” itself is a distinctive platform affordance, contributing to our understanding of platform differences.

In the article, “Is there room for connective democracy within the discussions about a new Constitution on social media? The case of Chile in the months leading up to the 2020 plebiscite,” López-Escarcena and colleagues qualitatively analyzed posts on Twitter and YouTube regarding the possibility of a new Constitution for Chile, a politically divisive issue in the country. They found that even though the content indicated people had negative attitudes toward their out party, it also offered evidence of positive and more neutral content that is more indicative of the ideals of connective democracy.

In our fifth paper, “The quality of connections: Deliberative reciprocity and inclusive listening as antidote to destructive polarization online,” Esau analyzed the symptoms of polarization in user-generated content from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit. She used connective democracy as a theoretical framework to propose two specific forms of reciprocal communication—deliberative reciprocity and inclusive listening—as antidotes to polarization.

Kim and Kim explored the repressive political climate in Myanmar (Burma) in our final article, “Social media as a seed of connective democracy in Myanmar (Burma): Freedom of speech, contractarianism, and strategic use of social media.” Using connective democracy as a framework, they map out a plan for social media to foster freedom of speech as a foundation of democracy and to bridge societal fissures in Myanmar.

Conclusion

This article presents connective democracy as a theoretical framework that promotes engagement across political divides and between ingroups and outgroups (Overgaard et al., 2022). Instead of exploring the origins and consequences of divisiveness, areas which have received ample academic treatment, connective democracy is interested in pathways, tools, techniques, and interventions that allow sustaining and continuing conversations between ideologically opposed—and not always rationally acting—individuals in heterodox information societies. Connective democracy stresses the importance of deliberation and discourse as critical antecedents for functioning democratic societies, but it highlights the need for people to value connectivity before these discussions can occur. Put simply: To keep democracy alive, people must be able to talk in earnest with those with whom they disagree.

The problems of political divisiveness on social media will likely accelerate as US-based technology companies, such as Meta and X, align themselves with new political leadership, and platform governance regimes diminish their protections of vulnerable populations (Divon & Ong, 2025). When platforms erode content moderation operations and eliminate fact-checking, this puts the onus on platform users. However, the future looks bleak if those who pick up the slack and moderate discussions dismiss democratic tenets, or utilize moderation, flagging, and other platform affordances as tools for harassment (Are, 2024; Meisner, 2023; Riedl et al., 2024). Some research suggests a harbinger of hope. In some cases, when people make connections over mutual—but uncontroversial—topics of interest, it can connect people with those they otherwise vehemently disagree with politically (Balietti et al., 2021; Wojcieszak & Mutz, 2009). However, when we tested this notion on Reddit, cross-cutting political talk in non-political spaces actually turned people off from communicating (N. J. Stroud et al., 2024).

Going forward, finding online spaces where both liberals and conservatives are in discourse with each other will likely become even rarer than it is today as self-segregation on the basis of ideology into tribal platforms further progresses (Fiesler & Dym, 2020; Urman & Katz, 2022). This foregrounds the need for platforms that are broadly appealing across society and steeped in public interest principles and human rights to allow connective democracy to occur. Connective democracy requires a sense of civic responsibility to engage, in good faith, with those who one disagrees with politically, if that is a sensible option. We want to be clear here: We do not posit that connective democracy is the antidote to the rampant racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and discrimination (i.e. based on sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, class, ability, citizenship, nationality, religion) across social media. Connective democracy should not be misunderstood as a call-to-action asking marginalized people to engage in earnest with those who actively deny and erase their identity and humanity. Rather, connective democracy offers a theoretical framework for thinking about the steps that need to take place before talking across political differences can occur. Connective democracy provides a toolkit of sorts to enact deliberative democracy. It encourages connecting with political outgroups and trying to understand those who differ politically when both participants are open to seeing the others’ viewpoints. The articles in this special issue provide a wide range of theoretical and practical ways that connective democracy can be used to encourage these connections.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This special issue is a project of the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin.

ORCID iDs

Gina M. Masullo

Martin J. Riedl

Statements and Declarations

Author biographies

Gina M. Masullo (PhD, Syracuse University) is Associate Director of the Center for Media Engagement and an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Media, both at The University of Texas at Austin, USA. They are the author of Online Incivility and Public Debate: Nasty Talk and The New Town Hall: Why We Engage Personally with Politicians and co-editor of Scandal in a Digital Age. Their latest book, Midlife Sapphic Revelation in the Digital Age: How Digital Media Support Coming Out Later, is scheduled to come out in 2025. Pronouns: they/them.

Martin J. Riedl (PhD, The University of Texas at Austin) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an affiliate fellow at the Center for Media Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin. His research investigates platform governance and content moderation, digital journalism, as well as the spread of false and misleading information on social media.

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Connective Democracy: A New Approach to Fighting Political Divisiveness

Abstract

Keywords

Political divisiveness

Theory of connective democracy

Overview of special issue

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

ORCID iDs

Statements and Declarations

Author biographies

References