Investigating the potential of civil disagreement to decrease issue polarization in China

Abstract

AbstractWith mass polarization becoming an increasingly urgent sociopolitical agenda in both established and emerging democracies, academics and policy‐makers have been racing to develop effective depolarizing approaches. While (semi‐)authoritarian nations have also been afflicted by social cleavage and a negative, incompatible and even radicalized discussion climate towards public policy and sociopolitical issues, polarization and related countermeasures in such contexts have thus far gained scarce academic attention. The present study addresses this gap, investigating the depolarization potential of exposure to civil (vs. uncivil) cross‐cutting discussion in China's cyberspace. Through online experiment (N = 1064), participants were exposed to dissonant viewpoints on China's contentious divorce‐cooling‐off‐period policy, presented as original Weibo posts (China's social network site). Our results prove the effectiveness of civil disagreement, as a virtue and precondition of deliberation, in alleviating opinion extremity. Finally, implications for China's wider political system and deliberation studies are discussed.