interventions to
reduce polarization? Concerns about the negative societal consequences of
political polarization may lead to regulatory changes or new platform
features to deactivate it. For example, Settle (2018: chap. 9) offers
a helpful list of suggestions that include increasing information quality on
social media proﬁles,
incentivizing moderation by upranking reasonable
disagreement, and eliminating highly visible quantiﬁcation. As we consider
the beneﬁts and disadvantages of these options, we should bear in mind the
trade-offs that fostering moderation involves. The work by Mutz (2002) is
a perfect illustration of these challenges: Exposure to civil, cross-cutting
exchanges may lead to political tolerance, but it can also make politics more
interesting, which depresses civic engagement and
complex and less
accentuates political
complex multicausal
relationships is essential in order to address one of the most important
Social_Media_and_Democracy