The Evolution of Political Hyperbole and Polarization: Echo Chambers and Voter-Elite Feedback Loops

Abstract

Many contemporary societies have witnessed increasingly polarized elites engaging in hyperbole in political discourse in order to influence public opinion and policy outcomes. In this paper, we build on the political economic themes explored by Gordon Rausser and extend our earlier collaborative work to study how polarization and hyperbole evolve over time as voter preferences and voices influence the political preferences of elites, while in turn being influenced by elite messages. The dynamic feedback loop between elites and voters generates insights into the critical roles of a number of facets of the polarization phenomenon: echo chambers, the relative influence of extreme versus moderate members within elites’ constituencies, voter sophistication in distinguishing hyperbole from valid information, and the permissive stances taken by social media in relation to fake news. We show that among all these factors, echo chambers play critically important roles in influencing the dynamic evolution of polarization and hyperbole.

Keywords: hyperbole, polarization

JEL Classification: C31, D71