CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Political misinformation or disinformation was the key reason for some U.S. couples’ recent divorces or romantic breakups, a new study found.
Emily Van Duyn, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, conducted in-depth interviews with 28 people who had recently ended a relationship with a partner whose political ideology did not match their own. Many of the participants mentioned that their media choices were responsible for the political differences that ultimately caused the relationships to end. Their stories offer fresh insights that the corrosive effects of the tendentiousness being fueled by disinformation/misinformation and partisan online communities in the public sphere can be just as divisive in private.
The failed relationships of people in the study ranged from committed dating relationships or cohabitations of several months or a year to marriages that ended in divorce after 23 years. Accordingly, the political ideologies and identities of those who were interviewed and their former partners included Libertarian, Conservative, Democrat, Republican and Progressive.
“It’s important to note that these relationships were not doomed for failure because of differing political beliefs,” the author said. “They failed, at least in part, because those differing beliefs were associated with different realities that disrupted a shared identity and shared reality with their partner.”
Van Duyn said the study participants’ experiences went beyond differing interpretations of political facts because false information created alternate, fictional realities that isolated the partners from each other ideologically and relationally, straining their bonds until the relationships failed.
The researcher said her findings, published in the journal New Media and Society, draw on the theory of shared reality, shedding light on the potential implications for intimate relationships when online disinformation/misinformation and radicalization disrupt individuals’ expectations that their partners will recognize and validate their respective understanding of the world.
“We really expect our romantic partners to have this shared reality — a similar view or understanding of the world to ours,” Van Duyn said. “It is much more important in romantic relationships than in other types of relationships because we are more dependent and interwoven in our day-to-day lives with our partners. Scholars have found that this shared sense of reality is really important for the success and happiness of romantic partnerships because it fosters closeness.”
Partners’ rabbit-holing behaviors on digital media — fixatedly diving into obscure topics, particularly extreme or false political information — and absorption in prominent conspiracy theories and groups ignited relational tension. This friction eroded some couples’ mutual views of reality, particularly when one partner questioned the validity of the information, media or communities that the other person was enmeshed with, Van Duyn said.
“This kind of rabbit-holing behavior is often associated with online conspiracy groups or content because it drives people to persistently dig further into similar topics or theories,” Van Duyn said. “There’s some evidence that platforms — and social media platforms in particular — are feeding this behavior because their algorithms are recommending things or queuing up videos to play next that entice viewers to continue their engagement with the information for extended periods.”
A 28-year-old Libertarian man pseudonymously called Adam in the study said his relationship with his ex-girlfriend of several months — whom he described as “very left leaning”— fell apart during the COVID-19 pandemic. Skeptical of the mainstream media his ex-girlfriend perceived as credible and that he viewed as propagandist, Adam said he preferred to get information from online videos and Libertarian media personalities that he believed were more moderate. As a result of their differing media choices, the couple disagreed strongly about the need to get vaccinated against the coronavirus and those differences eventually drove them apart.
Those in the study “recognized and were critical of the role that platforms play in giving space to false information that radicalized their former partners,” Van Duyn wrote. And she found that problems arose in many of their relationships when one partner’s interpretation of reality became their identity.
A 48-year-old white man pseudonymously called James in the study said his marriage of 23 years ended when his ex-wife “went down the rabbit hole of every conspiracy theory that developed” and changed her political views. James, a former pastor, told the researcher he had been raised and remained conversative through young adulthood but had become more progressive over time. Although they both voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, his partner’s views changed when a friend shared a conspiracy video about a purported satanic pedophile ring that included Democrats, people in Hollywood and members of the media.
James said that as his partner became increasingly fanatical and immersed in the conspiracy group culture, she eagerly shared some of the material with him but became angry and defensive when he questioned the dogma and sources. After a few years, he began to withdraw and challenged her beliefs less and less. In early 2023, the couple agreed to file for divorce, according to the study.
Close relationships tend to be where people are likely to be exposed to and believe corrections to false information, research has found. “By allowing and algorithmically reinforcing misinformation/ disinformation and conspiracy content online, platforms not only encourage the radicalization of individual users,” they diminish the likelihood of these individuals being exposed to differing information by the people closest to them and possibly questioning their beliefs, Van Duyn said.
As some former partners built identities around the falsehoods disseminated by conspiracy groups or when others embraced information from media sources that those in the study believed were untrustworthy, the individuals in the study were forced to choose between validating what they viewed as the truth or validating their partners.
Although the couples may have had differing political beliefs at the outset, Van Duyn said their relationships began to falter when one partner’s ideologies grew more extreme over time and became their identity, or the couples’ opposing beliefs about what was true seemed irreconcilable.
The findings underscore that individuals’ media habits are not separate from their relationships and that rabbit-holing behaviors and misinformation/disinformation consumption can widen the social divides between partisans, even those that love each other, Van Duyn said.
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