Exposure structures and intergroup attitudes in the UK: Linking media infrastructure and residential environments to affective polarisation and immigration attitudes
Published in PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2026
Recommended citation: Hofer, O. C. (2026). Exposure structures and intergroup attitudes in the UK: Linking media infrastructure and residential environments to affective polarisation and immigration attitudes. PhD thesis, University of Warwick. https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/202258/
Supervisors: Prof. Vincenzo Bove and Dr Andreas Murr. Examiners: Prof. Peter Thisted Dinesen (Copenhagen) and Prof. Özlem Atikcan (Warwick). Passed with no corrections.
The thesis asks how exposure structures shape intergroup attitudes in Britain in the years around Brexit, treating online environments and residential environments as two settings that govern who people encounter and how salient group boundaries become. Part II uses the British Election Study Internet Panel (2015–2020) to test whether time spent following political news is related to affective polarisation: within-person fixed-effects models replicate a positive association expressed mainly as higher in-group warmth, while an instrumental-variables strategy based on local broadband performance proves weak in a mature infrastructure period, and cross-lagged models point to high persistence and only modest directional effects. Part III turns to immigration attitudes and distinguishes neighbourhood diversity from segregation, measuring evenness and exposure at MSOA level against geolocated panel respondents and local deprivation. The clearest pattern is non-linear: moderate majority isolation corresponds to the most positive views, while both insulation and very intense exposure correspond to more negative sentiment, particularly under deprivation.
281 pages. Deposited open access in the Warwick Research Archive Portal.