WP2 explores how platform users perceive emotional polarization in online environments and, if they do, how they experience its manifestations across various issue domains. Whereas WP1 seeks to identify the empirical realities of ideological and affective polarization by examining algorithmic structures and users’ emotional responses, WP2 aims to explore and categorize how platform users perceive polarization in online environments—if they perceive it at all—and to map the ways in which polarization is experienced across a range of substantive domains (e.g., gender, generation, politics, and religion).

WP2 further investigates how users respond to polarization at both the cognitive level (e.g., acceptance, recognition, resistance) and the behavioral level (e.g., opposition and engagement). Through comparative interviews, WP2 examines how these patterns vary by individuals’ social characteristics (e.g., gender, age, political orientation, digital competence) and by geo-level societal conditions across Seoul, Chicago, London, and Amsterdam.

• RQ1: What forms does polarization take as individuals experience it on digital platforms?
• RQ2: How do individuals perceive and articulate the polarization they encounter on these platforms?
• RQ3: How do individuals process, emotionally cope with, or behaviorally respond to polarization experienced on digital platforms?
• RQ4: Do individuals attempt communicative practices aimed at overcoming polarization on these platforms? If so, what types of efforts are being undertaken?

WP2 will address these questions by conducting semi-structured interviews with active users of digital platforms—defined not as mere registrants, but as users identified based on frequency of access and time spent—sampled evenly within each of four cities (Seoul, Chicago, London, and Amsterdam), with quotas to ensure balance across age groups and gender.

To minimize priming participants with the concept of “polarization,” interviews will begin with open-ended questions—such as, “How often do you think you encounter members of groups that are dissimilar to you, or people who hold opposing views, online?”—before introducing the concept of affective polarization and then probing participants’ concrete experiences, emotional reactions, and behavioral responses.