Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 13: Focus Session: Opinion Formation

SOE 13.4: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2020, 10:15–10:30, GÖR 226

Polarization in Opinion Landscapes — •Martin Gestefeld, Nils Tobias Henschel, Jan Lorenz, and Klaus Boehnke — Jacobs University Bremen, Germany

In recent years, politics and especially opinion formation in society appears to be more polarized than in the years before. Polarization can been proven in specific topics but there is still a lack of evidence for a general trend in society. First, in an exploratory data analysis, the evolution of individual responses has been analyzed on the left-right political self-placements and similar attitude in survey data. Trends in these aspects are captured and compared in the contexts of country and topic using representative survey data from 9 rounds of the European Social Survey. Applying a simple model demonstrates that people who placed their opinions on a 0 to 10 scale can be split up into 5 different groups. In addition to this model various formal measurements can be applied and provide information on the degree of polarization in distributions of attitudes. Concluding, this work extracts polarization and leads to an improved perspective on opinion formations through social surveys.