Title: Attitudes toward civil liberties and rights among politically charged online groups
Abstract: Civil liberties and rights such as freedom of expression, press, thought, religion, association, lifestyle, and equality against the law are being subjected to controversies within the socio-political landscape of Western developed countries. Based on a literature review, we developed two hypotheses aimed at explaining divergent attitudes toward civil liberties among politically charged online communities on each side of the political spectrum. We report a correlational study using a cross-sectional sample of social media users (N = 902), whose results suggest that, as expected by our hypotheses, support for civil liberties tend to be higher among online groups of rightists—with economic conservatism being the only positive predictor and left-wing authoritarianism being a strong negative predictor. These results are discussed in relation to polarization over civil liberties and perceived power imbalances between online groups.