Dear friends of My Country Talks,

Hello and welcome to the August edition of our newsletter. September is around the corner and, in many countries, that means it’s time to go back-to-school. It’s never too late to learn something new, so this month we’re bringing you an expert-curated reading list about polarization around the world. 

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Display portal for pan-European media

My Country Talks is part of a pan-European consortium creating Display, a new platform for independent and community media. If you are a journalist or media professional, make note of these two deadlines in September. 

Display.Voices Conference

Are you a journalist or community media based in Europe? Join us for the Display.Voices conference in Budapest on September 22-23. The two-day program features reflections on the current media ecosystem, hands-on workshops on cross-border collaborations and community building, and networking with independent newsrooms from all over Europe. 

Click here to learn more and register

€12,000 journalism grant

There’s still time to submit a proposal for the Display journalism grant, which closes on September 6. Media platforms can receive up to €12,000 to produce high-quality journalistic content in all possible formats. The grant will fund both local media organizations interested in expanding and connecting their work to a European level, as well as outlets that have a proven journalistic record in serving pan-European audiences.

More information can be found here

What happens when opposites become enemies?

Is Germany also at risk of high polarization like we see in the USA? Stanford University researchers, Jan Voelkel and Adrian Blattner, say it's a problem to be taken seriously. Writing for ZEIT ONLINE, they argue that Germany faces a high level of affective polarization. They discuss findings from a study about our program, Germany Talks, that Blattner conducted with fellow researcher Martin Koenen from Harvard University. 

In their study, 75% of participants said they have no friends, family, or colleagues from the party they dislike the most. Participants were also less likely to cooperate with a stranger simply based on whether they had a different party affiliation. However, contact with someone from another party, for example through a one-on-one conversation, reduced levels of affective polarization in the short term. 

Read the article (in German) here

You can find the full study about Germany Talks (in English) here

This study was scientifically independent and not commissioned by ZEIT ONLINE.

Back to school: (De)Polarization reading list

Polarization has quickly become a buzzword, and it’s not hard to understand why. From the family dinner table to the voting booth, rising polarization is affecting daily life for many people around the world. But what does “polarization” actually mean? How do you measure it? And is the situation really as bad as it seems? 

Together with Jan Voelkel (Stanford), Adrian Blattner (Stanford), and Martin Koenen (Harvard) - the three researchers mentioned above - we have created a reading list to help you understand the state of polarization today.

1. How politics got so polarized

A history of polarization in the USA, and the factors that got us where we are today. Elizabeth Kolbert writes for The New Yorker in 2021.

2. How to Understand the global spread of political polarization

Polarization isn’t just an American phenomenon. A Q&A with researchers Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2019.

3. The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States

Researchers are increasingly focused on affective polarization - when people hold negative feelings toward members of another party. This paper from Iyengar et. al. is a great introductory text. 

4. Cross-country trends in affective polarization

This 2022 paper from Boxell, Gentzkow, and Shapiro provides data on affective polarization from 12 OECD countries over the past 40 years. 

5. Interventions to reduce partisan animosity

What can we do to stop polarization, or even reverse it? In this paper, 12 researchers take a look at different interventions designed for depolarization.