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

该项目将使用数字人种学和跨学科的混合方法来回答这样一个问题：在古巴当代一党专政的国家背景下，Facebook在多大程度上以及如何产生情感两极分化？这项研究的贡献有四个方面。首先，这项关于一党制国家中情感分化和社交媒体的研究将填补现有文献中关于情感极化的空白，这些文献长期以来一直专注于美国和欧洲。其次，这项研究将从非政党中心的角度分析情感两极分化。第三，这将是关于古巴情感两极分化与社交媒体之间联系的第一项研究。第四，定性和人种学方法将有助于理解情感分化的复杂性，而不是大多数研究假设的二元化。此外，通过研究Facebook上与线下活动相关的情感两极分化，包括反政府抗议、社交媒体监管以及政府回应社交媒体上批评的措施，该项目探索了社交媒体上情感两极分化给国家带来的后果。

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.