Resumen de How did we get here? The consequences of deceit in addressing political polarization
Marta Pérez Escolar, José Manuel Noguera Vivo
The main contribution of this chapter is to study the central role information disorders play in political polarization; in concrete, the objective of this chapter is to illustrate how Spanish political elites – parties and politicians – feed radical ghettos and polarized groups, when distributing lies and fabricated stories on the Internet. For this purpose, we have applied a qualitative methodology, consisting of the case study method, to understand the potential impact of both – political polarization and false content – on the weakened quality of the Spanish democracy. The selected cases include the most popular political parties in Spain: PSOE, PP, Vox, Unidas Podemos and Ciudadanos. As we have demonstrated, political parties in Spain spread both, misinformation and disinformation. We confirm that political parties contribute to increase political polarization when they spread fabricated stories. This results in what we call diversification of polarization, which refers to people becoming isolated in multiple bubble cyber-ghettos depending upon the nature of the issue under debate, i.e. inequality between sexes, climate change, immigration issues, the high prices of rent or the Catalonian independence movement, among other examples. As a consequence, the act of lying increases the diversification of polarization and reduces the possibilities of achieving consensus.
