Partisans Segregate Themselves in Separate News Universes, Study Finds
The polarization of media is driven by self selection? I find it humorous that this would be the lede at the LA times, when the real story here is that Hard Conservatives tend to get the majority of their news from just one source.
Die-hard liberals and down-the-line conservatives have segregated themselves into strikingly different news universes, relying on sources of information that often reinforce their views and discussing politics mostly with others of like minds, according to an in-depth new study.
Although few people manage to live in a complete ideological bubble, the most politically active and aware Americans - the ones who dominate election contests, particularly primaries, and drive discussions of political issues - have gone far in that direction, according to the data from a Pew Research Center project on political polarization and the media.
The roughly 1 in 5 Americans with consistently liberal or conservative views, based on a 10-question scale of political opinions, rely on very different sources of news and information, and nearly all the sources trusted by one side are heavily distrusted by the other.
It should also be no surprise to anyone that Conservatives are more self limiting than Liberals in their selected set of news-blinders, with Fox News being the overwhelming Conservative choice.
No single source dominates the audience on the left the way Fox dominates the right. CNN, MSNBC, NPR and the New York Times each were cited by 10% or more of consistent liberals as their chief sources of political and government news. Just over half of consistent liberals said they had gotten news from NPR or CNN in the week of the survey. Almost no consistent liberals cited Fox as their main source of news.
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