Charlotte Shields-Rossi | a&e editor

With the recent uprise in political violence throughout the country, professors and students are pointing the finger at social media and increased political polarization.

Lew Irwin, political science professor at Duquesne University, said social media has created a divide so strong that the political left and right have separated into “tribes.”

“The left and right have become so antagonistic toward the other side. People just genuinely do not like people on the other side of the political divide,” Irwin said.

Riley Hunter, Duquesne student and president of a local chapter of College Democrats, looked at the reaction the two major political parties in the U.S. had toward Charlie Kirk’s assassination earlier this month as an example.

“Both sides point fingers at each other, it’s so easy to villainize the other side,” Hunter said.

Jonathan Collins, Duquesne student and president of the Duquesne College Republicans agreed with Irwin and Hunter, but added that this polarization isn’t just happening outside party lines, it’s also inside.

Social media is fracturing the Republican party, he said.

“We are seeing different kinds of content becoming radicalized to an extent that is just not applicable to our political system,” Collins said.

With increased use of social media, Collins said that it’s easy to be sucked into an echo chamber, which is an environment where a person only encounters information that reinforces their own beliefs.

“No innovation of thought can form,” Collins said. “To me that is the detriment of our democracy.”

Alison Dagnes, political science professor at Shippensburg University, focuses on political media and its effects in her research. She explained why someone might get sucked into an echo chamber and move away from traditional and objective news.

“Instead of getting news that’s really sort of upsetting and hard to swallow, it’s so much easier to get onto a podcast where people agree with you and just scream about the people who you’ve now been told you have to hate,” Dagnes said.

These social media echo chambers fuel resentment and hate, which is all purposeful, she said.

Dagnes also referred to social media algorithms, which sort users’ feeds based on relevance. The algorithm measures user interaction, behavior and interests, according to Sprout Social.

“Social media engagement increases when you’re angry and decreases when you’re happy,” Dagnes said.

Irwin said both social media companies and political content creators feed off of user outrage.

“They know that it’s far easier to motivate people with negative emotions, like anger and hate than it is to motivate people with positive emotions like affinity for a candidate or cause,” Irwin said. “They work very hard to make the content that you see to be increasingly provocative and increasingly negative.”

He proposed that people should talk face to face instead of through a screen. When people that disagree with each other converse about issues that they care about and respectfully share ideas, it can reduce animosity between the groups, Irwin said.

“It doesn’t mean that you come out of those conversations with everybody agreeing, but it does mean that people will start to see each other as human beings rather than seeing each other as enemies across a partisan divide,” Irwin said.

Collins said that having these conversations can be hard, but they are necessary to bridge the divide.

“Instead of running away from an issue because we’re afraid of what others may think — instead, face it and continue to have difficult conversations,” Collins said. “At the end of the day you have to realize that we’re all humans and hopeful our goal is to bring positive change. That’s the nature of what politics is.”

Being presidents of campus political clubs both Collins and Hunter said they hope to hold events together to create positive change and work on non-partisan issues, although nothing has been planned yet.

Respectful conversations across the aisle are important, but Hunter said that political leaders need to lead by example.

“I think we need to see major change from the top down,” Hunter said. “If we are not seeing anything from our party leadership that’s showing us a positive change, we can’t expect normal citizens to follow through.”

She said she is hopeful that there will be productive outcomes in the future, but changing the political climate for the better won’t be easy.

“I think we need to see a major overhaul in the way that both parties use social media,” she said. “We are much more the same then we are different, the only way to realize that is [to] get off your phone.”

Charlotte Shields-Rossi can be reached at shieldsrossic@duq.edu