Attack or Substance? Different types of conflict in the news and their effect on citizen engagement

News about politics is often framed in terms of conflict. Disagreement, conflict, and differences of opinion between political actors are part of democratic decision-making, and may, in principle, have positive effects on citizens’ political attitudes and participation. Previous research has yielded inconclusive results on the question how different types of conflict may matter differently for citizen engagement in politics. In this study, based on an experiment, we consider different types of conflict, i.e. substantive issue-conflict vs. personal attack between political actors, and also distinguish between one-sided and two-sided conflict. Our findings show that attack-style conflict is more mobilizing than substantive issue-conflict and two-sided conflict is more mobilizing than one-sided conflict. This effect is particularly pronounced among citizens who are less cynical about politics and display higher levels of political efficacy.