Mass media and political polarization in the United States
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Political Science, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Stecula, Dominik Andrzej
issued: 2018-07-19T22:42:46Z
issued: 2018
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This dissertation is composed of three papers broadly examining the relationship between the mass media and political polarization in the United States. The first paper examines whether the media might have played a role in the polarization of the American public. Using an automated content analysis of almost 600,000 news articles and transcripts from a variety of prominent news media sources over the past four decades, the paper analyzes whether coverage of ten issues has changed over time along several dimensions of tone (affect, incivility, conflict) and source cues (in particular, whether the media cover increasingly more extreme politicians). The results indicate that the media likely contributed to the process of partisan sorting by increasingly providing the public with partisan signals in the news coverage. There is also some evidence that the media contributed to the affective polarization of the public. The second paper focuses on the nature of media coverage of climate change and its effect on public opinion polarization of climate change attitudes, finding that despite the common perception, the media, including conservative media, did not overwhelmingly promote climate change skeptics, industry groups, or denialist organizations. Instead, the coverage featured an increasing number of partisan cues as the issue rose in salience, which polarized the public. In the third paper, I examine the relationship between climate change attitudes and news media diets. Previous work has focused extensively on Fox News and posits that Fox has been a dominant player in turning the Americans, and especially Republicans, into climate skeptics. Utilizing a large national survey, I find that the relationship is more nuanced than previously argued. Fox News does seem to have a negative eﬀect on supporting governmental action in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, though that eﬀect is limited to a small group of purists stuck in the conservative echo chamber. Most people, and…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/66546
note: MASS MEDIA AND POLITICAL POLARIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES by Dominik Andrzej Stecula A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Political Science) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) July 2018 © Dominik Andrzej Stecula, 2018 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Mass media and political polarization in the United States submitted by Dominik Andrzej Stecula in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science Examining Committee: Paul J. Quirk Supervisor Richard Johnston Supervisory Committee Member Frederick Cutler Supervisory Committee Member Mary Lynn Young University Examiner Gyung-Ho Jeong University Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Stuart N. Soroka Supervisory Committee Member Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract This dissertation is composed of three papers broadly examining the relationship between the mass media and political polarization in the United States. The first paper examines whether the media might have played a role in the polarization of the American public. Using an automated content analysis of almost 600,000 news articles and transcripts from a variety of prominent news media sources over the past four decades, the paper analyzes whether coverage of ten issues has changed over time along several dimensions of tone (affect, incivility, conflict) and source cues (in particular, whether the media cover increasingly more extreme politicians). The results indicate that the media likely contributed to the process of partisan sorting by increasingly providing the public with partisan signals in the news coverage. There is also some evidence that the media contributed to the affective polarization of the public. The second paper foc…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2018-09
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0368990
language: eng
degree discipline: Political Science
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/66546