Affective Polarisation, Social Media and One-Party States: The Cuban Case Study

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This project will use digital ethnography and a transdisciplinary mixed methods approach to answer the question, 'To what extent and how does Facebook produce affective polarisation in the contemporary one-party state context of Cuba?'. The contribution of this study is four-fold. First, this research on affective polarisation and social media in one-party states will fill a gap in the existing literature on affective polarisation, which has long been focused on the United States and Europe. Second, this study will analyse affective polarisation from a non-party-centred approach. Third, it will constitute the first piece of research on the links between affective polarisation and social media in Cuba. Fourth, the qualitative and ethnographic approach will help understand the complexity of affective polarization beyond the binary division assumed by most studies on the topic. Moreover, by examining affective polarisation on Facebook in relation to offline events, including anti-government protests, social media regulations, and government measures responding to criticism on social media, the project explores the consequences of affective polarisation on social media for the state.