Rising Partisanship In Broadcast News: Virginia Tech Research Reveals Troubling Trends

A recent study presented at the 17th AAAI International Conference on Internet and Social Media (ICWSM 2023), held June 5-8, 2023 in Cyprus, Greece, examines how information from competing parties, particularly party news outlets like CNN and Fox News, although they have only grown in the past decade, they have also increased political polarization on social media like Twitter. This study was conducted by researchers at Virginia Tech and could help scholars and the public better understand the long-term impact of partisan media coverage on political opinion in the United States and beyond.

“When we talk about language mediated and constantly interpreted by powerful actors, how does that affect conversations about important social issues in society?” said Dr. Eugenia Rowe, assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech and co-author of the study. "Careful analysis of such large datasets opens up entirely new avenues for understanding media and its impact."

Dr. Eugenia Ron, associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech and co-author of the study. (Photo: Virginia Tech/Peter Means)

For the study, researchers analyzed 10 years of closed captioning reports from CNN and Fox News based on data from the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer and the Internet Archive, as well as tweets from users who follow @ CNN or @FoxNews. mentioned these tags. The team also included keyword searches related to six controversial policy issues; Healthcare; immigration; Racism; Climate change; Black Lives Matter and its acronym BLM; Police.

The researchers noted that the reason television news is used for research is that Americans receive five times more information from television than from print or online media. The team found that Twitter's audience, now known as the X, repeats the language used by their favorite broadcasters within two to three months of analyzing the data, and vice versa.

“Part of the reason for this is the growing decline in cable news viewing,” said Dr. Mike Horning, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech School of Communications, a former journalist and co-author of the study. . “They are in competition with everything on the Internet. How can you get through all this noise? Often the decision becomes more unusual and more difficult. Since television news depends on audiences, the incentive lies in market-driven decisions that may not be democratic.

Dr. Mike Horning, associate professor at Virginia Tech School of Communications, former journalist and co-author of the study. (Photo: Virginia Tech)

The researchers note that this study shows that television media polarization harms rather than promotes democratic debate on social media, and they hope it can help viewers decide what is best for them in their content. media in the future.

As always, keep learning and researching.

Sources: Proceedings of AAAI's Seventeenth International Conference on Internet and Social Media (ICWSM 2023) , EurekAlert!, Stanford Cable TV News Analyser, Internet Archive, X, X(1).

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