The Impact of Online Political Conflict Frames on Party Evaluations and Trust in Politicians

Politicians’ emphasis on conflict has been linked to public dislike of political parties and political distrust. Previous research has focused on how different conflict types, such as civil versus uncivil conflicts, impact perceptions of political actors and politics. However, little is known about how other relevant dimensions of conflict affect evaluations of political actors and trust in politicians. To address this gap and reconcile fragmented accounts and mixed evidence on the effects of conflict frames, this study explores how four dimensions of political conflict framing affect evaluations of the frame sponsor and trust in politicians. We specifically consider the impact of (1) uncivil versus civil conflicts, (2) substantive conflicts with or without personal attacks, (3) ordinary conflicts versus deep conflicts that concern underlying moral/epistemic principles, and (4) normative versus factual conflicts. An online experiment in the Netherlands (N = 1,376) was conducted. The results indicate that uncivil conflict frames can negatively affect voters’ evaluation of political parties, whereas factual conflict can fuel political distrust. However, most conflicts do not affect voters’ political attitudes. These findings suggest that most voters are resilient to conflict or have become numb to such messages due to prolonged exposure in our current information ecology.