aksss7812 t1_j56j4eh wrote on January 20, 2023 at 7:14 PM

There is a problem here which is that the measure was actually asking citizens their opinion on polarisation. This is an issue, for example, Americans might say their country is more polarised because they have Fox and CNN (based on media), but maybe an Argentinian would say the same thing based on some type of geographic polarisation. (Essentially this just measures citizens' perception of polarisation in their country. Well-established measures on polarisation can be found in "Working paper

Conceptualizing and measuring polarization: A review" (Bauer,2019).

Aggravating_Unit_265 t1_j56n3t1 wrote on January 20, 2023 at 7:40 PM

I get your point but in this case the divide is for similar reasons as that of the US, so it is a fair comparison

aksss7812 t1_j56oa6q wrote on January 20, 2023 at 7:47 PM

I agree with you intuitively, and I do think you would get similar results if you were to use decent measures. People do usually have a good idea of polarisation in their country. I'm just saying, as far as science goes, this is such a poor measure. Note, I was just using Argentina and USA as an example off top of my head.

Super-Hotel-3784 t1_j5avcz7 wrote on January 21, 2023 at 5:40 PM

Yes, but im familiar with the divisions of the two countries and for me the argentinian division is 10x worst than the american one, in america democrats and republicans both have the same work ethic and aproach to life, they just differ in things like guns, healthcare, drugs and those things.

Here in Argentina literally the two visions of half of the population are 100% opposite even in things like work ethic and how to progress in life. One side wants to do drugs, steal and free recieve money from the state without working and the other wants to study an progress.

aksss7812 t1_j5ax5q1 wrote on January 21, 2023 at 5:52 PM

That’s interesting. I don’t know anything about Argentinian politics or society, and my understanding of American politics comes solely through international media(not very reliable). I was just referencing an example to explain my point. I could have said country A and country B. My point was just that the measuring of polarisation is very poor and the alternatives are not complicated and are well known. I really don’t understand why they decided to measure it by asking a single question.