Affective polarization is a relatively new concept that refers to feelings of sympathy towards partisans of a person's own political party preference and antipathy towards those who vote for and identify with opposing parties. This thesis aims to answer the questions if those who know more about politics also are more affectively polarized, and whether there is a difference between knowing about different types of political facts, and the predicted level of affective polarization. Using panel data from 35 different countries from Module 4 of the Comparative Study of Election Systems, I measure the affective polarization on an individual level, and whether answering correctly to different types of knowledge questions predict the respondents to be more or less affectively polarized. The results show that political knowledge significantly predicts higher levels of affective polarization, but that there is a difference between different types of political knowledge. Political knowledge typically learned from the media has a stronger factor in predicting affective polarization.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-444151 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Holmgren, Embla |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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