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The making of a new cleavage? Evidence from social media debates about migration

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  • Ademmer, Esther
  • Stöhr, Tobias

Abstract

Immigration has been considered critical for the emergence of a new cleavage in the European Union that pits the winners of globalisation against the losers. Ample research has demonstrated the social structure and the organisational base of this new cleavage. So far, however, there is no study showing that the rise of new parties is also associated with a stronger political identification of individuals with issues that these parties promote - a key feature to speak of a cleavage in the tradition of Lipset and Rokkan. In this paper, we provide systematic evidence on whether immigration contributes to the collective identification with the new cleavage on the micro-level. We show that an increase in immigration is strongly associated with this process and contrast our argument against alternative explanations that scrutinize the dealignment of individuals and political parties. We analyse a dataset of about 600 000 comments made on Facebook below articles of regional German newspapers using topic models to add to the debate about the emergence of new cleavages in Europe.

Suggested Citation

  • Ademmer, Esther & Stöhr, Tobias, 2019. "The making of a new cleavage? Evidence from social media debates about migration," Kiel Working Papers 2140, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2140
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    1. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon & Andrea Prat, 2018. "Transparency and Deliberation Within the FOMC: A Computational Linguistics Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 801-870.
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    1. Renáta Németh, 2023. "A scoping review on the use of natural language processing in research on political polarization: trends and research prospects," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 289-313, April.

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