Echo Chambers and Partisan Divide: Investigating Political Polarization of Youth in the Cyber Sphere

Abstract

This research investigates the phenomenon of Echo Chambers and Partisan Divide: Investigating Political Polarization of Youth in the cyber Sphere. This study examines the relationship between various factors, including social media political expression, partisanship affective polarization and ideological polarization among youth.  For this quantitative survey study, the data was collected from the youth of Faisalabad, mainly students of different universities through simple random sampling. Pre-made questionnaire comprises 33 items was employed for this purpose. A sample of 397 participants and employing a 5-point Likert scale to measure the variables. To investigate these correlations, we ran a number of regression studies. The study's theoretical foundation was provided by Schmitt's partisan theory as well as Henri Tajfel and John Turner's Social Identity Theory within the framework of Political Identity Theory. The data was analyzed through SPSS. While political expression on social media did not significantly associate with ideological polarization, our findings show a significant positive association between affective polarization and political expression on social media, suggesting that other factors may be more crucial in determining ideological divisions. A significant portion of the diversity in affective polarization cannot be explained by partisanship. The absence of a meaningful correlation shows how complicated ideological polarization is and implies that partisanship is not a sufficient explanation. There are suggestions made for more research.