A Major New Study Shows That Political Polarization Is Mainly A Right-Wing Phenomenon

[JHan]

Last edited Fri Mar 17, 2017, 01:01 AM - Edit history (1)

A major new study of social-media sharing patterns shows that political polarization is more common among conservatives than liberals — and that the exaggerations and falsehoods emanating from right-wing media outlets such as Breitbart News have infected mainstream discourse.

Though the report, published by the Columbia Journalism Review, does an excellent job of laying out the challenge posed by Breitbart and its ilk, it is less than clear on how to counter it. Successfully standing up for truthful reporting in this environment “could usher in a new golden age for the Fourth Estate,” the authors write. But members of the public who care about such journalism are already flocking to news organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and, locally, The Boston Globe, all of which have experienced a surge in paid subscriptions since the election of President Trump. That’s heartening, but there are no signs that it’s had any effect on the popularity or influence of the right-wing partisan media.

*snip*

The CJR study, by scholars at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, at Harvard Law School, and the MIT Center for Civic Media, examined more than 1.25 million articles between April 1, 2015, and Election Day. What they found was that Hillary Clinton supporters shared stories from across a relatively broad political spectrum, including center-right sources such as The Wall Street Journal, mainstream news organizations like the Times and the Post, and partisan liberal sites like The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast.

By contrast, Donald Trump supporters clustered around Breitbart — headed until recently by Stephen Bannon, the hard-right nationalist now ensconced in the White House — and a few like-minded websites such as The Daily Caller, Alex Jones' Infowars, and The Gateway Pundit. Even Fox News was dropped from the favored circle back when it was attacking Trump during the primaries, and only re-entered the fold once it had made its peace with the future president.

http://news.wgbh.org/2017/03/15/politics-government/major-new-study-shows-political-polarization-mainly-right-wing

A LOT of food for thought.

EDIT:

What this suggests is that whichever party is more unified wins the prize.. seems simple enough right? Yes, democrats have to create better memes to challenge the conservative spin machine, but this problem goes beyond the presence of a sound dem strategy ( or not).

We've got a serious fact problem in America where people don't expend the time or effort to ascertain if something is factual or not. The information age has made it easy to retreat to sources that feed our biases and prejudices, where folks live in a perpetual bubble of ignorance.

Facts are now construed as "matters of opinion" - Facts like : Global warming is real, racism and sexism continue to harm social progress, vaccines ARE effective,trickle down economics is BS, etc. RWingers are especially guilty of repudiating FACTS because they despise all the great things about modern living: cosmopolitanism, social liberalization, gender equality, fighting racial injustice, renewable energy, diversity etc.

[AJT]

1. No surprise. This needs to be fixed or we're in big trouble

[FrenchieCat]

2. We're already in big trouble...

[Dulcinea]

36. My 2 cents:

The conservative movement will die if there's no one to hate & demonize. Some people need that "us vs. them" mentality. When the Cold War ended, the political right didn't have the Soviets or the Commies to kick around anymore, so they turned on their fellow Americans.

[Fast Walker 52]

43. True! But where does it go? Hopefully we will not descend into outright Nazism.

[smirkymonkey]

3. Kicking for later reading!

[JEFF9K]

4. Free speech rights don't include fraud. Right-wing media trick people into voting against their ...

own interests.

I would call that election fraud.

[cstanleytech]

5. A large part of the problem is that alot of the people that follow Breitbart and similar media

(I cant call them "news" since they deal largely in fiction) want to be told what to think and what to believe because doing it for themselves might mean that they would have to accept responsibility for their decisions and the idea of having to do that scares the shit out of them at which point they lash out and attack the one scaring them and in this case its the real legitimate news sources they attack.

[kimbutgar]

6. I used to work in a kindergarten class as a resource teacher

The kindergarten teacher had a unit in the ocean she was working with and she taught these little kids how to recognize the difference between fact and opinion. Those little children were able to tell the difference after she worked on this concept after a month. They probably had better grasp of the concept than these right wingers!

[Ligyron]

20. and this is where it needs to start too, kindergarten.

It's never too soon to learn and begin to practice critical thinking skills.

[diva77]

21. Dem Party is party of critical thinking with fact-based evidence.

GOP...um...

[Ruy Lopez]

7. It's probably true, but with a caveat

The caveat being that it could be argued that ever since the Viet Nam years, the reputable media (NYT, WP, CNN, ..) tended to be sympathetic to Democratic themes.

Look at the sentence "Hillary Clinton supporters shared stories from across a relatively broad political spectrum, including center-right sources such as The Wall Street Journal, mainstream news organizations like the Times and the Post, and partisan liberal sites like The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast. "

Of the 5 titles quoted here, 4 supported Hillary, and I'm not sure about the WSJ, but I'm not sure it supported Trump

Hence the flight of the hard right to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News first, then further into la-la-land with Breitbart and Alex Jones.

[JHB]

8. This past election may not be the best example to use for that argument, since...

...plenty of normally Republican-leaning newspapers endorsed Hillary too.

[Ruy Lopez]

48. True, but the four media quoted were left leaning anyway

[hunter]

58. That's centrist media, in no way leaning left.

The U.S.A. is center-right in it's politics and the U.S. media reflects that.

Maybe one third of U.S. Americans are outright fascists.

[JI7]

9. many news organizations that supported Republicans in the past did not support Trump

the hard right is a bigoted hate group which is why they turn to those sources.

[mr_lebowski]

10. Umm ... no, because media's job is reporting on actual 'truth', not made-up bullshit ...

To the extent that mainstream news/'reputable media' is 'sympathetic' to 'Democratic Themes' ... has quite a bit to do with the fact that REALITY ... has a decidedly 'liberal bias'.

The Right ... esp. today ... live in a f****** FANTASY WORLD, constructed by the likes of Faux, Limbaugh, Jones, Breitbart.

Actual reputable media (and coincidentally ... liberals) ... care about and report on REALITY ... which is anathema to the Right, unless it comports with the narrow, bigoted, selfish, hateful worldview towards which they're predisposed.

IOW, 'the mainstream media' ... reports TRUTH (by and large).

Hence it appearing 'biased' to those who have no actual USE ... for 'truth'.

[JHan]

11. yep ++++

[DemocraticSocialist8]

41. The MSM doesnt' always report truth though and that's part of the problem too

and it's why e-media (internet media) has gained in popularity. Is the MSM as bad as the right-wing smear machine? No, but let's not pretend they're liberal either. The MSM plays both sides. This is the same MSM that gave Trump billions in free airtime...even the "liberal" MSNBC.

[socialist_n_TN]

56. This

I don't mistake center to center-right sources for "left" and nobody else should either. If you do, you're just buying into the political spectrum that the right wing WANTS you to buy into. They are "normalizing" what once were considered extreme position and politicians, which makes ACTUAL moderate seem far left. Reagan was a right-winger and actually on the far right, but compared to the current administration he would look like a "moderate" is an example of this effect.

And polarization works both ways. The DSA (looking at your username here) has seen its membership triple in two or three months and there's a similar rise in memberships of all leftist organizations. But that's among the population and NOT the news media. That's still VERY right wing. Even "left" MSM is pretty conservative.

[Ruy Lopez]

47. I mostly agree, but is it 100%?

While I would agree with you to a high degree, especially in the sense that there's no comparison between serious sources like the NTY or WP and thingies like Breitbart, are the serious sources 100% bias free?

As an example, the serious media did a poor job of reporting that Syrians were a minority of the roughly one million people who applied for asylum in Germany in 2015/16 and that a noticeable minority of them valued religion over secular values.

Imho, it's under reporting of such inconvenient facts by the serious media which gave a boost to the conspiracy alt right outfits (as mentioned by DemocraticSocialist8 in the post #41)

[mr_lebowski]

59. Fair point ...

Cheers

[JHan]

12. Democratic themes or not just plain ole fact?

Republicans have lost the argument on a bunch of issues.

Let's remember that during the 60's, the Birchers sought to fight against what they saw as a take over by leftists who framed the narrative on issues like civil rights, the environment, etc. Conservative foundations and institutes, and think tanks, sprung up to combat "leftist ideas" , the goal being to assault an increasing awareness about all the isms in society which exposed ugly truths the Birchers had no interest in confronting.

[JHan]

52. "both sides" do it too doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

not even a little bit.

that's like me saying : Donald Trump Lies.
And someone replying : Well all politicians lie.

It's not at all the same.

Even Barry Goldwater saw the road Republicans were headed and warned them. Conservatism is now caught up in denial and lost in a reality of their own making. They value their ideology above fact and reason.

And the less said about Paglia the better, I can barely follow her conclusions given her penchant for non-sequiturs.

But I get what you're alluding to: Evolutionary psychologists cover that area and get a lot of flack from many on the left. I'm familiar with the arguments, often research that's descriptive is conflated with being some sort of prescriptive analysis of behavior. On the other hand there's also some healthy debate and counter arguments to even Pinker's blank slate. But.. how has this impacted policy or thinking?

It's thanks to Liberalism that there's awareness there should be equal access to opportunities regardless of gender or race ( or hormonal balance * ) and that's a good thing.

(EDIT" - there's a lot of vaccine denial on the left, and other ideas that veer into regressive. Still, it's not as bad as what we see on the right)

[Ruy Lopez]

54. Your text agrees with me more than its title

I suppose we agree that both sides can deny some facts due to ideology, with some evangelical conservatives clearly taking the cake in that respect.

But as the title of my post suggested, being less deniers of facts should not absolve progressives of some soul searching re: convenient denial of some realities (usually realities that do not tally with a desire for universal equality in all fields and all respects)

As for Paglia, while she might not always be right and **might** sometimes relish being abrasive, she does tend to have that gift of bringing discussions down to a practical level. I like the way she reminds some facts (hormones) and debunks some attitudes (the adversarial feminists)

[JHan]

57. "A practical level"

no, it's the level of BS.

And she succeeds because she enjoys being contrarian. Paglia* is also a magificent troll.

Any activism that challenges preconceived notions about anything is gonna be "adversarial",

....but you're saying that because some leftists deny differences exist between men and women, that progressives have to own up to this and it's somehow the same as the denialists on the right. Except it isn't. We should be careful making deterministic or prescriptive arguments because of hormones in this age where we're discovering neuroplasticity and a bunch of other factors that influence psychological make up. Of course hormones do influence behavior, what "adversarial" feminists usually argue is that hormonal differences should not justify discrimination.

(And the problem isn't just conservative Christians but libertarians as well: it is the Koch Brothers who have financed anti global warming crusades after all. )

[VOX]

26. You're blaming "liberal media" for driving Republicans into the arms of extremist ideologues?

Your argument presupposes that Republicans (traditionally less cosmopolitan, less educated, more religious, etc.) would not have gravitated to Limbaugh, et al, in the 1990s had they been somehow "included" to a greater degree in mainstream media some 30 years earlier.

The problem with this idea is that the American right was on the wrong side of history throughout the 1960s, an era you correctly identify as a watershed. Consider some of the positions of the right during this period:
-Pushed back hard against civil rights legislation, branded MLK, Jr. a communist. Fought against non-discriminatory housing laws.
-In 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater carried, significantly, six states: Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, marking the first time that a GOP candidate did so well in the Deep South (understood as a rage-vote commentary on civil-rights activism). The GOP platform called for large cuts in social programs; Goldwater himself toyed with the idea of making Social Security optional, and suggested deployment of nuclear weapons in Vietnam (ironically, Goldwater became more liberal as he aged).
-Convinced that communism's goal was total world domination; uncritically backed the Vietnam conflict, which included napalming of civilians, and extended carpet-bombing into Laos and Cambodia. Fruitlessly dragged what had been LBJ's millstone for another 5 years, at great cost of lives and resources.
-Convicted world-renowned boxer/activist Muhammad Ali to five years in prison (conviction overturned, no time served) and banned him from his livelihood for three years.
-Resisted women's fight for equal rights and equal pay (still ongoing).
-Publicly contemptuous of the 60's youth movement, looked the other way when anti-war demonstrators were beaten, or killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in spring of 1970. "Goddamned hippies," etc.
-By the 1970s, resorted to "high crimes and misdemeanors" by breaking into the DNC headquarters, ultimately resulting in Nixon's resignation.

There are numerous examples, these are just a few. If the media at the time appeared to favor Democrats, it's because Republicans were extremely reactionary in their politics, out of step with views not shared by most Americans.

Liberals will forever wonder what the world would have been like had JFK, MLK, Jr. and RFK not been snuffed out over a short, 5-year window. The right has never suffered such a massive loss.

Finally, welcome to DU.

[Alice11111]

31. Well said.

[VOX]

61. Thanks, Alice11111.

[Fast Walker 52]

44. great post-- thanks

[VOX]

62. Thank you, Fast Walker 52.

[Ruy Lopez]

49. Well, yes, but there were unintended consequences

I think we agree on the premises
- the right was on the wrong side of history in the VietNam years
- as a consequence, Democratic ideas became the de facto subtext of the mainstream media

What I was trying to say is that, as this Democratic lean of the serious media became prevalent, frustrated hard core Republicans started a flight away from serious sources, to Fox and Limbaugh first, and gradually all the way to Breibart or Alex Jones.

An abrupt summary could be that the victory of Democratic ideas on the media front pushed large swathes of the Republican electorate into an alternative reality, not least a really odd denial of scientific reality (evolution and the Big Bang being curse words in some quarters)

[VOX]

63. I think I get what you're saying. Our American Civil War is an example...

The South, an agrarian society, was extremely (almost completely) dependent upon slave labor. Although the South was predominately Democratic then, the planter class was an aristocracy, conservative by today's yardstick. They were states' rights and small central-government believers, and saw federal tariffs as tyranny. When Lincoln was elected, they felt that their slave economy would be abruptly taken away, and so 11 states withdrew from the union. Driven, as it were, no matter how inhuman their case was.

The North had manufacturing centers and a greater diversity of population. The Republicans were the liberal party then, believers in strong central government, anti-slavery, preserve the union, etc.

The ideological divide was so broad and so set in stone that compromise failed. Open warfare and 4 years of unholy bloodshed.

[hay rick]

46. Welcome to DU.

Love your user name even though I haven't played chess in decades.

My local paper was taken over by Gannett a couple months before the election. I live in a very red area. Our local paper has made a cause out of advocating for water quality issues in recent years. Hillary's campaign nailed the issue. Trump's campaign offered silence and the reasonable expectation was that they would ultimately be on the wrong side of the issue for "philosophical" reasons. The editorial board refused to endorse in the race citing the lack of opportunity to sit down with the candidates. The real reason was cowardice.

For the first time in my life I do not subscribe to the local newspaper.

[Ruy Lopez]

50. Correct attribution of the name Ruy Lopez :)

[LanternWaste]

60. Your premise lacks evidence to support it.

Wrong caveat. The media establishment, not moving right quickly enough for the conservatives, was quickly labeled "sympathetic to Democratic themes. ...", hence the flight of the hard right...

[Chakaconcarne]

13. I believe in many ways, hard right media is propped up

and not truly read or considered meaningful by the majority of Americans.

Now, as people see MSM harping on fact...which is a great habit for them to get into, and then people compare to hard right media, they will see the difference and the flighty, Bullshitting content will become more and more obvious. Also more obvious because there are some things that come out of Trump in video or tweet that can't even be spun by breitbart, etc.

[Fast Walker 52]

45. this is true-- I know that true lefty media can never seem to get going because of a lack of funding

that obviously is not a problem for rightwing media outlets. Even if people as a whole don't really watch/listen to those rightwing outlets intensively, they seem to permeate our culture pretty strongly.

[Dorn]

14. The Overton window's right wing push has put everyone at risk

It is not just that right wingers only listen to their own narrow echo chamber it is that even the left wing has moved right of center. Where are the democrats standing up for unions? In my opinion we are in a national emergency no different that after Sputnik was launched or the attack on Pearl Harbor -- why do my Democratic Senators vote to approve clearly unqualified cabinet appointees?

The anti-christian right wing, Paul Ryan among them, has proposed killing thousands of Americans a year with changes to the ACA. How much farther will the Overton window be pushed ?

[JHan]

28. Hmm..

We would be even more to the right were it not for democrats.

If you look at budgets under Democratic presidents or even our replies to State of the Union addresses by Republican presidents, the difference is stark. There's a common theme throughout because we're still arguing for the same things we always argued for: the importance of a social dividend, protecting the environment, inclusivity, fairness.

Republican thinking is now laid bare for all to see: expanding the military, tax cuts for the wealthy, propping extractive industries while starving renewables, screwing the environment thus the repeal of protections ensuring clean water and clean air.

And Democrats are fighting the repeal of the ACA - as for the votes on some Cabinet appointees, those dems make their own political calculations depending on their constituency. Of course it's not ideal, we have a dumbass as President, but their choices is not a reflection of party philosophy.. it's complicated.

But yes, the Overton Window is tipping to the right, due to fear and irrationality - fear of the immigrant, fear of "other", fear of change. That's what we have to counter.

[mercuryblues]

15. They are adept at ignoring facts

I posted a video of trump saying something outrageously ugly. Their response was "fake news". Here was the video with the words coming out of his own mouth and they claimed "fake." You can't counter or fix that kind of partisanship.

[JHan]

17. It's like talking to a wall.

They shut out anything that challenges their view of the world.

To be fair there are some on the left like that, but it's an epidemic on the right.

[Hugin]

16. Well, the Democrats have a difficult time rallying around a central theme...

like HATE and BIGOTRY.

We like people to be happy, even if we aren't personally.

[JHan]

18. there is something to that..

authoritarianism is appealing to some folks.

[Hugin]

19. I suppose the Democratic philosophy could be summed up as...

"Rising water eventually floats all boats."

Inherent optimism. Tragically, the rabid right-wing lacks the patience for such a world view to play out.

[hibbing]

22. could usher in a new golden age for the Fourth Estate,...lol

I don't see that happening anytime soon. The corporate media whores all hang out at the same DC cocktail parties with the ruling class. Why would they want to rock the boat?


Peace

[Amaryllis]

23. THere is another factor I've noticed. We can identify sources as being left, right, center, etc.

We know MSNBC, for example, is more liberal; Fox right, and so on. I talked to a Fox/Rush consumer, and she didn't identify her sources as right wing but rather as true, vs. the rest not true. She said she couldn't watch the networks because there was so much liberal bias.

When I watch Rachel, I know it leans left, but when she watches Fox, she doesn't identify it as leaning right, but rather as factual and true vs. the other untrue sources. It's the alternative parallel universe that does not intersect with other universes, with alternative facts and alternative logic, thus making any dialogue or discourse nearly impossible.

A friend of mine said they are hypnotized.

[keepthemhonestO]

24. I think

since the election the resistance as a whole is good moving at lightning speed about getting our messages around really fast. I think what I am seeing is people are watching every little bit of news and are posting and cross posting in such a way that when something really big happens, I have personally see the really big thing 5-10 times within about a 20 minute window.

Scaring the crap out of people has a way of unifying us I guess.

Thanks for the post!

[certainot]

25. what is truly fucking idiotic is that there is probably no factoring for the main player

in rw media and domination of all media - rw talk radio.

there is no written record to study so they ignore it, even though it is the only medium that can do the unchallenged repetition needed to sell/establish big lies. rw radio is the ONLY major medium with no counter on the left.

they're studying fish without water. they're identifying and analyzing symptoms and ignoring the cause.

who's the one guy that can get republican reps to grovel subserviently? limbaugh

[PatrickforO]

29. I'm jealous. I posted this a week or so ago and it got TWO comments.

Good for you! You did better.

I guess they just weren't ready for me...

[JHan]

30. I missed it lol.

I usually search before I post, else I'd have given it a k n r.

[mdbl]

33. I saw it but thought it was just stating the obvious

I am still glad someone is talking about it, again. This has been going on since ronnie raygun got rid of the fairness doctrine.

From Wikipedia:

"The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was — in the Commission's view — honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC, which was believed to have been under pressure from then President Ronald Reagan, eliminated the Doctrine in 1987. The FCC formally removed the language that implemented the Doctrine, in August of 2011."

[JudyM]

55. It's important info. Must've been a deluge of other competing posts that day.

[lambchopp59]

32. Whut??? You're telling me that centuries worth of data from every accredited

institute of higher learning in the world, every article from media that maintains it's journalistic integrity and that from Breitbart-discredited sources such as... LOL... math and physics wasn't the massive conspiracy my radio told me it wuz?
Fucking duh. Didn't need any major study to know this. A little knowledge may be branded as dangerous...
But mass phenomena of willful ignorance created this Trump shithole the ignoramuses placed us squarely into.
Sometimes I believe some of the right wingnuts could be right about one thing... but not in the way they think. There need to be internment camps for some alright: Educational ones where the RWNJ's would be forced to watch, say, Neil DeGrasse Tyson's "Cosmos" or other mass media morsels of factual enlightenment. "POP" goes the idiot bubble.

[mdbl]

34. You can't force people who are willfully ignorant to learn

They sit there with their eyes closed and their hands over their ears going LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA

That is what brainwashing does to people.

[lambchopp59]

35. Regrettably all too true. Perhaps an alternative plan

Would be to get the tobacco industry to advertise heavily between Limbaugh's diatribes: "SMOKE! Smoke more!!! Smoke two at once!! Cancer doesn't exist, it's just left wing propaganda!! Go buy more cartons of cigarettes NOW!!!

[mdbl]

37. That might work!

Gives me hope for the future.

[JHan]

40. We need this studied, we have to stop underestimating what we're up against.

We're in our own bubble - where we assume everyone must know what we know. We see this with pundits all the time , and even those of us who follow politics closely - we always assume people out there know more than they actually do, when they don't.

And in this arena, are think tanks and institutes which have poured billions into destroying facts and shaping narratives that benefit them and them alone.

Fox News has also been instrumental here in the tools they use: "Fair and Balanced" - where "fair" and "balance" are both a ruse to introduce non-facts to challenge real facts. Rogers Ailes understood that facts can't match passion and anger, facts can be destroyed by appealing to people's emotions and fears. This is how he and fox news shaped stories to sell to their gullible audience- by giving untruths and lies the same weight as truth.

So the phenomenon needs examination. It also challenges the notion that the liberal bubble is as isolated from reality as the conservative bubble - it isn't.

[Roy Rolling]

38. Thanks!

I as commenting yesterday before the, conservatives incessantly attack liberals in the media, while liberals attack the issues and are not obsessed with the right, the way the right is obsessed with attacking liberals.

But there is a disconnect. It all "comes out in the wash" at the ballot box, and that narrow gate has very different rules than simply what is the truth.

[olegramps]

39. Until people take to the streets and protest it will not change.

The Viet Nam war was only ended when the country was on the verge of riots after millions took to the streets and yes there was some violence. This nation was born with the blood of patriots who had had enough.

[Fast Walker 52]

42. thanks for posting-- I was just going to post this myself but figured someone else beat me to it

A super important piece

[mdbl]

53. Time to make it a left wing penomenon

I am truly sick of those morons. Let's start lying about them! Rush is a bigot! Sean Hannity is an a-hole! Repugs are greedy. Repugs hate smart people. Repugs lie about eveything! Wait, these aren't lies!