We take two approaches to understanding democratically corrosive sentiment (DCS) in the US, which we operationalize in terms of populist attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, and expectation of fraud in the next election. Our first approach is media use, which is not well understood as a correlate of DCS beyond generalities about the harms of social media and partisan news. We distinguish between mainstream news and right-wing media, and between three categories of social media: those facilitating stronger ties among users, those facilitating weaker ties, and extremist Alt-Tech brands. Our second approach to explaining DCS is attitudinal. For this, we introduce a concept called Feelings of Being Devalued (FBD), which we offer as a complement to status threat and sense of material deprivation. Using a survey of our design ( N = 2,000) fielded in the US in 2022, we show that: (1) mainstream news use and attention to right-wing media have opposite relationships with DCS; (2) not only Alt-Tech social media but also stronger-tie media such as Facebook are correlated with DCS, while use of weaker-tie social media such as X are uncorrelated in a model with a rich set of controls; and (3) FBD is strongly associated with DCS—more so than right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and ideology.

中文翻译：

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美国的媒体使用、被贬值的感觉以及民主腐蚀性情绪


我们采用两种方法来理解美国的民主腐蚀情绪（DCS），我们将其具体化为民粹主义态度、阴谋信仰和下次选举中的舞弊预期。我们的第一个方法是媒体使用，除了社交媒体和党派新闻危害的一般性之外，媒体使用并没有被很好地理解为 DCS 的相关性。我们区分主流新闻和右翼媒体，以及三类社交媒体：促进用户之间更牢固联系的社交媒体、促进更弱联系的社交媒体以及极端主义的另类科技品牌。我们解释 DCS 的第二种方法是态度。为此，我们引入了一个称为被贬值感（FBD）的概念，我们将其作为地位威胁和物质匮乏感的补充。通过 2022 年在美国进行的一项设计调查（N = 2,000），我们表明：（1）主流新闻的使用和对右翼媒体的关注与 DCS 具有相反的关系； (2) 在具有丰富控制集的模型中，不仅 Alt-Tech 社交媒体，而且 Facebook 等强关系媒体都与 DCS 相关，而 X 等弱关系社交媒体的使用则不相关； (3) FBD 与 DCS 密切相关——比右翼威权主义、社会统治取向和意识形态更密切。