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How is entrenchment not related to polarization?

If the meme is center right, it will make a center right person more firm in his center rightness. If it's far-right, it won't make that same person move further to the right.

Right... but think that through. If all far right people become more entrenched it means they also aren't shifting leftward.

That means unless all sides are equally targeted, they are not, then one side will win out overtime because they don't "lose" people while the other does.

Except when boomers think they're news.

But it tends to leads to othering of other sections of the spectrum, so i feel like it's still polarizing. In fact, it might be turning the spectrum multi-polar, instead of how people typically look at it as bi-polar.

All of this is obviously just a personal perspective, i don't have data to back any of this up, unlike the authors. It just seems to me like the distinction between polarization and entrenchment might be valid, but all the bad stuff we can pin on polarization, would likely stick to entrenchment, too.

And how does "entrenchment" differ from "polarization"?

It's related but not the same. Entrenchment reifies positions, whatever they may be. Polarization is closer associated with party values and perhaps extremism. But that's mostly my guess as to how the author is interpreting these effects. The ideological backgrounds they assigned were random, so they may or may not have been a fit for whoever they were assigned to. What the author may be observing is just that the memes have an impact when people happen to already agree with their statements, and that this impact was not necessarily along party lines.

I'd double check the full article to find the discussion on this if you can - I tried but it's not yet available through my institution.

Hi, I am the author of the article.

In this experiment, memes had no direct persuasion (e.g. people who were assigned to the left-wing memes condition didn't become more left-wing, and people assigned to the right-wing meme condition did not become more right-wing compared to the control group) nor did it have a direct polarization effect. However, I observe a polarization effect among individuals who feel close or fairly close to a political party and who were assigned to a treatment group that was incongruent with their prior beliefs (e.g. someone who is left-wing assigned to the right-wing treatment group). This suggest motivated reasoning in order to protect important prior beliefs.

​

Happy to answer any other questions :)

So, ironically, seeing both left- and right-wing memes will likely push someone father in the direction they normally lean, than just seeing the memes from the side they agree with? That's nuts.

If you get your information through memes, we are in bigger trouble than I thought.

Only if they feel close or fairly close to a political party. These individuals could be motivated more than others to protect their political beliefs when they see incongruent information.

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