While exposure to diverse viewpoints may reduce polarization, it can also
have a backfire effect and exacerbate polarization when the discussion is
adversarial. Here, we examine the question whether intergroup interactions
around important events affect polarization between majority and minority
groups in social networks. We compile data on the religious identity of nearly
700,000 Indian Twitter users engaging in COVID-19-related discourse during
2020. We introduce a new measure for an individual's group conformity based on
contextualized embeddings of tweet text, which helps us assess polarization
between religious groups. We then use a meta-learning framework to examine
heterogeneous treatment effects of intergroup interactions on an individual's
group conformity in the light of communal, political, and socio-economic
events. We find that for political and social events, intergroup interactions
reduce polarization. This decline is weaker for individuals at the extreme who
already exhibit high conformity to their group. In contrast, during communal
events, intergroup interactions can increase group conformity. Finally, we
decompose the differential effects across religious groups in terms of emotions
and topics of discussion. The results show that the dynamics of religious
polarization are sensitive to the context and have important implications for
understanding the role of intergroup interactions.

群体间互动与不同背景事件对宗教群体之间的分化产生复杂的效应，既可以降低分化也可以加剧分化，因此了解背景与情境对群体间互动所产生的影响对于理解宗教分化的动态及其重要作用具有重要意义。