I denna uppsats är syftet att analysera en polariserad debatt och undersöka om det går att se tecken på kunskapsresistens, förnekelsen av fakta. Studien bygger på kritisk diskursanalys och analyserar delar av klimatdebatten. Materialet utgörs av en samling artiklar skrivna av kritiker som motsätter sig det som idag anses vara den etablerade forskningen kring klimatet, och fokus ligger på att granska hur detta går att koppla samman med kunskapsresistens. Analysen av materialet visar att det går att finna tendenser på kunskapsresistens bland materialet hämtat ur klimatdebatten och diskuterar hur detta kan komma till uttryck i olika sammanhang inom debatten.

Previous research has detailed concerns that exposure to both pro- and counter- attitudinal content on social media can result in outcomes of ideological polarization (e.g. Bail et al., 2018; Lu & Lee, 2018). However, further research is needed in order to understand the conditions under which this polarization may take place. To investigate this issue, this study utilizes a sample of 414 social media users in the U.S. to investigate the mediating effects of a) anger toward political opposites and b) anger toward oppositional social media content on the relationships between various types of political content exposure and the outcome of ideological polarization. Results revealed that both types of politically oriented anger partially or fully mediated all relationships between the explanatory variables and the outcome variable, demonstrating that exposure to all types of political content on social media can affect polarization through the mechanism of anger. Theoretical implications for the echo chamber theory and the backfire effect are discussed.

Over the past decade, the success rate of non-violent resistance movements has decreased. With the development of information and communication technology (ICT), governments have taken repression into the digital realm to tamper with protest movements. The effects of repression on protest mobilization have been rather inconclusive; even less is known about the effects of digital repression. By using the political jiu-jitsu, backfire and moral jiu-jitsu theory as well as the theory on emotion and protest participation in hard autocracy, this thesis showcases how the moral shock and indignation helps to overcome fear caused by both traditional and digital repression, thus helping to explain the relationship between repression and mobilization. This theoretical framework is applied to the case of Belarusian post-election protests in 2010 and 2020. Although traditional repression was present in both time frames, there is a significant variation in the government’s digital repression resolve. The analysis shows that mobilization was primarily driven by traditional repression – police brutality and violence. However, in 2020 people were also outraged by censorship and Internet shutdowns that left them in an information vacuum which was deemed completely undeserved. The outrage about digital repression was facilitated by the opposition activities that acted against digital repression.