Political rage on social media is making us cynical

Study: When social media attack: How exposure to political attacks on social media promotes anger and political cynicism. Political anger and cynicism are rising in the United States and in many democracies worldwide, and both are associated with exposure to political attacks on social media, a new University of Michigan study shows. Americans use social media to find information and news about politics, but much of the content they see in their feeds is hostile, uncivil and attacking, said lead author Ariel Hasell , assistant professor of communication and media and an affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the U-M Institute for Social Research. Hasell and colleagues investigated whether exposure to political attacks on social media is associated with political cynicism, and if so, whether emotions like anger and anxiety play a role in this process. They found that people who were exposed to more political attacks on social media were more politically cynical, and that perceived exposure to these attacks was associated with more anger about the state of the U.S., which was subsequently related to greater levels of political cynicism. Their results, based on a panel survey of 1,800 American adults fielded during the 2020 election, were recently published in the International Journal of Press/Politics. "It's important to understand how feelings of cynicism emerge because we're seeing many democratic governments facing crises of legitimacy,- Hasell said.