Populist and extreme voices that once existed at the margins of European party systems have now
become mainstream. From the rise of Italy's Five Star Movement to the electoral successes of Alternative
für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany and Poland's Law and Justice Party (PiS), the populist wave that has
swept over Europe in the last decade has baffled many political analysts and observers. Whilst initially
understood as a reflection of the economic anxieties brought about by the 2008 financial crisis, it has
become apparent that the recent surge of anti-establishment parties was strengthened by growing
fears of cultural liberalisation, mass immigration and the perceived abandonment of national
sovereignty to the diktats of globalised elites.
As public discourse coarsens and tensions rise, there is a growing sense that European society is more
polarised than ever before. Against this backdrop, new digital technologies have taken centre stage in
political processes – both as a source of information and a campaigning platform. In critical moments
of public life, citizens of Europe increasingly consult social media for news about politics and public
affairs. Such new and relatively unregulated platforms create new opportunities for nefarious actors to
deliberately push false content and distort information flows for political gain. While the political, social
and ideological forces that drive citizens apart are varied and complex, in recent years, scholars and
policy-makers have increasingly pointed to digital technology as one of the potential drivers of
polarisation.
The following report explores the relationship between these two phenomena in contemporary Europe.
It does so by first reviewing two core mechanisms through which social media could be polarising
European publics: inadvertently, through design choices and incentives (2.1 Polarisation by design) that
potentially narrow the diversity of information accessed by individuals while facilitating the
dissemination of divisive and emotionally-charged content; and deliberately (2.2 Polarisation by
manipulation), through the exploitation of loopholes in an attention-driven media ecosystem to stoke
divisions and manipulate users.
We then outline three counter-trends, whereby technology has and could continue to facilitate a better
relationship between European publics and civic life, starting with social media as a catalyst and focal
point for political activism, mobilisation and organising (4.1). We then touch on the powers of digital
nudging, its effects on giving, civic debate and voting practices, paying special attention to how
purposeful design and positive social nudging can help create healthier online environments and
incentivise political engagement (4.2). Finally, we survey how advances in artificial intelligence,
although still in their infancy, offer new opportunities to bring about better accountability and
transparency in online information environments (4.3).
In the last section of this report, we sketch out how these trends may continue in the future. We note
that as individuals increasingly retreat to private spaces to access and discuss political news and
information, new challenges will emerge for policy-makers to monitor and remedy the spread of
misleading, false or polarising information (5.1). Beyond that, many of today's political manipulation
tools are likely to sharpen with time as they benefit from technological advances in artificial intelligence
and increasingly embedded communication cultures. This could take the form of increasingly
sophisticated conversational interfaces and 'deepfakes' for example – an image synthesis technique
already used to create hoaxes and falsehoods involving politicians (5.2). Yet as technology becomes
more and more politicised and regulatory efforts are ramped up to address these new threats, we
caution against short-sighted legal action, which if taken precipitously, could have chilling effects on
democracy itself (5.3).