Dissertation
The mediated sort: Emerging partisan media as an antecedent to political polarization
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2018
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/118448
Abstract
Political polarization has been commonly identified in contemporary news coverage as a key problem for civility and the preservation of democratic institutions in the U.S. (Foran, 2017). However, the exact causes of polarization and how to define it have hotly contested in the existing communication and political science literature (Fiorina, Abrams & Pope, 2005; McCarty, Poole & Rosenthal, 2006). While a consensus has been reached that much of this polarization on the part of Democrats and Republicans in Congress who continue to grow further apart ideologically, others have also examined the media’s role in polarizing the beliefs and attitudes of everyday Americans (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009). At the same time, other scholars like Levendusky (2009) have attempted to reconceptualize polarization as an increasingly alignment between political ideology and affiliation with one of the two major political parties, i.e. partisan sorting. Additional research has established an association between consuming opinionated cable talk shows and a tendency to become “sorted” (Levendusky, 2013a), but existing scholarship in this area has not addressed sorting in the context of emerging internet and social media-based forms of partisan media. To address this gap in the literature, two studies were conducted which confronted this very question: Study 1 relied qualitative in-depth interviews, while Study 2 relied on statistical analyses of cross-sectional survey data. Results from these two studies demonstrates that a positive relationship does exist between emerging partisan media and sorting, but only among individuals who identify with the Democratic Party. Following an explanation of these results, normative/scholarly implications for understandings of political polarization in the U.S. are discussed along with future areas of research on polarization and partisan sorting.
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Details
- Title
- The mediated sort: Emerging partisan media as an antecedent to political polarization
- Creators
- Kyle John Lorenzano
- Contributors
- Porismita Borah (Advisor)Bruce Pinkleton (Committee Member)Bimbisar Irom (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Edward R. Murrow College of Communication
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 133
- Identifiers
- 99900581819101842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation