MASS MEDIA AND POLITICAL POLARIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES by Dominik Andrzej

184 Pages·2017·7.87 MB·English

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
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

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
submitted by Dominik Andrzej Stecula 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

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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 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
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that effect is limited to a small group of purists stuck in the conservative echo chamber. Most
people, and importantly, most Republicans, are not very likely to be members of that group.

iv
Lay Summary

This dissertation is composed of three papers analyzing the relationship between the news media
and the process of political polarization in the United States. The first paper examines how the
news content changed over the past forty years as the media landscape fragmented. Contrary to
some theories, the news did not become more negative, conflictual, or uncivil. It did, however,
become increasingly politicized. The second paper examines why Republicans became skeptical
of climate change, and what role the media played in the process. The findings suggest that the
media politicized the climate coverage as it increased in prominence, and the exposure to
political signals on the topic spurred Republican climate skepticism. The third paper examines
whether Fox News viewership is related to climate skepticism, and finds that it is, but the
relationship is strong only for the small group of people in the right-wing echo chamber.
v
Preface

Paper II of this dissertation has been co-authored with Eric Merkley, a Ph.D. student in the
department of political science at UBC. Both Eric and I contributed equally to the development
of the research question. Both Eric and I downloaded the stories that the analysis is based on
from online databases, but Eric has done slightly more of that. I have collected the public opinion
polls from the Roper Center and put together the climate skepticism measure. Eric has been the
primary person who conceived of the time series models explaining climate skepticism and ran
the analyses. I created all of the figures in Stata. Both Eric and I wrote the paper, and revised it
considerably several times. The core of the introduction, literature review, and conclusion has
been done by me, while the core of the write up of the model justification and discussion of the
results has been done by Eric.

A version of this work has been presented at the annual meeting of the American Political
Science Association in 2015 and 2016, the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Political
Science Association in 2016, as well as the Comparative-Canadian Workshop at UBC in the fall
of 2015.

An academic paper that is based on Paper II, and which utilized parts of its data has recently
been published in the journal Science Communication. The full citation is:
Merkley, E., & Stecula, D. A. (2018). Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The
Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization. Science Communication, 40(2),
258–274. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547018760334
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Papers I and III have been entirely single-authored endeavors, where I formulated the research
questions, collected the data, performed the analyses, and wrote up the results. Paper III relies on
data collected by YouGov in an internet panel survey, which are part of a larger research project
conducted by Dr. Andrew Owen, Dr. Paul Quirk, and Dr. Kathryn Harrison (all UBC), as well as
Dr. Nancy Olewiler (Simon Fraser University). They have generously agreed to allow me to ask
several questions to get the data for my dissertation. The media questions, designed by me, on
which Paper III is based, are part of the larger study which has been approved by UBC’s
Behavioural Research Ethics Board (application # H13-03509). A previous version of Paper III
has been presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association in 2017.

vii
Table of Contents

Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iii
Lay Summary ........................................................................................................................... v
Preface ...................................................................................................................................... vi
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... viii
List of Tables............................................................................................................................ xi
List of Figures ........................................................................................................................ xiii
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ xiv
Dedication .............................................................................................................................. xvi
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1
Paper I Politicized news: How the news media contributed to the polarized climate in the
United States ............................................................................................................................. 5
1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5
2.1 The media and three types of polarization ......................................................................... 7
2.1.1 Ideological polarization .............................................................................................. 7
2.1.2 Partisan sorting ........................................................................................................... 9
2.1.3 Affective polarization ............................................................................................... 10
2.2 Mass media and polarization ........................................................................................... 11
2.2.1 Mass media and ideological polarization .................................................................. 14
2.2.2 Mass media and partisan sorting ............................................................................... 16
2.2.3 Mass media and affective polarization ...................................................................... 17
3 Data and methods............................................................................................................... 20
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4 Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 25
5 Discussion and conclusion ................................................................................................. 43
Paper II Party cues in the news: Explaining the dynamics of climate change polarization 47
1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 47
2 Mass media and the determinants of climate change attitudes............................................. 49
3 Climate change coverage in the news media....................................................................... 57
4 The (potential) polarizers ................................................................................................... 59
4.1 Comparisons across media and over time .................................................................... 63
4.2 Messages by polarizing actors ..................................................................................... 71
5 Is party elite debate driving climate skepticism? ................................................................. 75
6 Discussion and conclusion ................................................................................................. 86
Paper III Media diets and climate change attitudes: Does Fox News turn Americans into
climate skeptics? ..................................................................................................................... 91
1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 91
2 Cable news and climate change attitudes ............................................................................ 93
3 Data and methods............................................................................................................... 97
4 Media diets ...................................................................................................................... 101
5 Media diets and climate skepticism .................................................................................. 108
6 Discussion and conclusion ............................................................................................... 114
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 117
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 120
Appendices ............................................................................................................................ 137
Appendix A Search protocol ............................................................................................... 137
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Appendix B News items breakdown ................................................................................... 139
Appendix C Dictionaries, paper I ........................................................................................ 141
Appendix D Politician news mentions ................................................................................. 147
Appendix E Mood measure ................................................................................................. 151
Appendix F Dictionaries, paper II ....................................................................................... 153
Appendix G Coding instructions ......................................................................................... 161
Appendix H Media survey questions ................................................................................... 165
Appendix I Variable background ........................................................................................ 166
Appendix J Full regression results ....................................................................................... 168

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