In contemporary political discourse, the concern of affective polarization, often fueled by uncivil and sexist discourse, is notably evident in digital communication contexts like WhatsApp. In this study, we examined the potential effects of uncivil and sexist messages as well as moderator interventions against these messages coming from political in- and out-group members in such political groups through a survey experiment ( N = 1,464) fielded during the 2022 Uttar Pradesh (India) Legislative Assembly Elections. We investigate these questions and extend the prior work on affective polarization by introducing a new measure of Average Inter-party Affective Distance, which provides a single metric to index overall polarization in a multi-party election context. Our results showed that exposure to sexist uncivil messages had no discernible effect on affective polarization, political participation, and voting intention. Additionally, moderator warnings against incivility had no significant effects. However, we observed a variation in how respondents processed these messages based on their preexisting attitudes; notably, individuals with less sexist views were more inclined to vote after being exposed to sexist uncivil messages. These findings suggest that the influence of incivility and sexism in messaging platforms like WhatsApp on the wider electorate’s political behavior and attitudes is relatively limited. This research contributes to our understanding of the role of digital political communication, highlighting the importance of message content and preexisting individual differences in shaping affective polarization and mobilization.

中文翻译：

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WhatsApp 政治讨论中性别歧视和不礼貌行为对情感两极分化的影响：来自 2022 年印度多党选举的证据

在当代政治话语中，对情感两极分化的担忧往往是由不文明和性别歧视的话语助长的，这在 WhatsApp 等数字通信环境中尤为明显。在这项研究中，我们通过 2022 年 Uttar 期间进行的一项调查实验（N = 1,464），研究了不文明和性别歧视信息的潜在影响，以及针对来自此类政治团体的政治内外成员的这些信息的主持人干预。邦（印度）立法议会选举。我们研究了这些问题，并通过引入一种新的平均政党间情感距离衡量标准来扩展之前关于情感两极分化的工作，该方法提供了一个单一指标来索引多党选举背景下的整体两极分化。我们的研究结果表明，接触性别歧视的不文明信息对情感两极分化、政治参与和投票意愿没有明显影响。此外，主持人针对不文明行为的警告也没有产生显着效果。然而，我们观察到受访者根据他们先前存在的态度处理这些信息的方式有所不同。值得注意的是，性别歧视观点较少的人在接触到性别歧视的不文明信息后更倾向于投票。这些发现表明，WhatsApp 等通讯平台中的不文明行为和性别歧视对广大选民的政治行为和态度的影响相对有限。这项研究有助于我们理解数字政治传播的作用，强调信息内容和预先存在的个体差异在塑造情感极化和动员方面的重要性。