Seeing Media Polarization through Data

A talk at Build Peace 2015, Nicosia, Cyprus Polarization, the pulling apart and hardening of positions, is readily visible in the data from several contexts. The "media" frequently takes some blame for this process, and there's corresponding evidence of a rise in partisan and extremist information sources from broadcast news to microblogging. But it's a lot less clear where cause and effect lies. There may be things that journalists and platform operators can do to increase the visibility of opposing points of view and promote meaningful dialog between sides. Alternatively media fragmentation may be merely a symptom of increasing polarization, or even just a natural consequence of increased choice. We'll dig into the relationship between media and polarization from several different dimensions, from the latest data-driven research to the view from working journalists. What all this means for peace building practitioners is the question we're hoping you can help us answer. Refs Media and Political Polarization Markus Prior http://www.princeton.edu/~mprior/Prior%20MediaPolarization.pdf A wonderful review of the issue, highlighting two serious practical problems in determining the link between media and polarization: it's almost impossible to measure what media someone is exposed to, and we should expect that increased media choice leads to increased divergence in media consumption. Political Polarization in the American Public - Pew Research Center http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/ Extensive survey data on political attitudes in the U.S., showing how the country has pulled apart over the last 20 years, and how political attitudes relate to things like media consumption. Press-Party Parallelism and Polarization of News Media during an Election Campaign: The Case of the 2011 Turkish Elections Ali Çarkoglu, Lemi Baruh, and Kerem Yıldırım http://hij.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/21/1940161214528994 A content analysis shows that the tone of pro- and anti-AKP news sources diverged, that is, became increasingly polarized, prior to the 2011 election. Bias in Cable News: Real Effects and Polarization Gregory J. Martin and Ali Yurukoglu http://web.stanford.edu/~ayurukog/cable_news.pdf Using the fact that cable channels assigned lower numbers on the dial receive more attention, the authors show that watching Fox or MSNBC has a small but measurable effect on voting. Secular vs. Islamist Polarization in Egypt on Twitter Ingmar Weber, Venkata R. Kiran Garimella, Alaa Batayneh http://ingmarweber.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Secular-vs.-Islamist-Polarization-in-Egypt-on-Twitter.pdf Polarization of hashtag usage correlates with major events and outbreaks of violence during the Egyptian revolution. The news we use: A mixed methods analysis of cable news media polarization Stephen Lott https://uta-ir.tdl.org/uta-ir/bitstream/handle/10106/24105/Lott_uta_2502M_12489.pdf Content analysis of MSNBC/FOX shows they really do use more divisive language than CNN.