Exposure to online news and polarization of xenophobic attitudes

A quantitative analysis of survey data in Japan and the U.S.

Abstract

Many scholars and journalists point out the possibility that the Internet expands the divide in public opinion and in our society by causing polarization of people's opinions about political issues, because selective exposure to news and civic information is more likely to occur on the Internet than in the mass-media-centered environment that was the norm in the past. In this study, turning attention to cyber-racism such as “Alt-Right” in the U.S. or “Netto-uyoku” in Japan, we examined the relations between polarization of xenophobic attitudes and frequencies of exposure to online news via using PCs/smartphones, based on the data from online questionnaire surveys conducted in the U.S. and Japan in 2016. The results of quantile regression analyses showed that in Japan exposure to online news via PCs extended significantly the polarization of users' attitudes, whereas in the U.S. it shifted the attitudes uniformly toward an anti-xenophobic direction. These findings suggest that the occurrence of opinion polarization on the Internet is influenced by social, political and cultural contexts.