Party or policy? Examining news consumption and affective polarization in Italy

Over the past 10 years, three main parties/coalitions have dominated Italian politics: the Partito Democratico on the left; the right-wing coalition, led by Fratelli d’Italia; the populist Movimento Cinque Stelle. These three have shaped the contours of political parallelism, selective exposure and affective polarization in Italy. Within this context, this study uses a two-wave online survey of the Italian population to examine the relationship between exposure to political news and affective polarization. The study makes two main contributions to the literature in this area. First, it examines the antecedents of affective polarization in a country with a multi-party system and with complex dynamics of political parallelism and selective exposure. Second, it tests two mechanisms that can explain the relationship between exposure to political news and affective polarization.