ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes connective democracy – a new approach that seeks to reduce divisiveness and promotes constructive discursive spaces – as a lens for understanding the problem, with an orientation towards bridging societal and political divides. Connective democracy is a new way of thinking about the problem of polarisation. Rather than focusing on the nature and consequences of the problem, connective democracy asks scholars to think about solutions that bridge societal and political divides. In the context of affective polarisation, however, the most promising type of intergroup contact may be mediated intergroup contact, which happens when people see sympathetic out-group members on TV or hear positive intergroup interactions on the radio. Priming superordinate identities is promising, but if national identity is primed, it can exacerbate the polarisation of attitudes towards people of other nationalities. A successful in-person intervention building on interpersonal contact theory may work for the 40 people involved, but the extent of polarisation requires more far-reaching ideas.
