Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Media Consumption, Liberals, and Conservatives

Pew has a new study out showing a couple things about media consumption. First is that team red relies heavily on Fox for their information, while Dems consume news from a range of nonpartisan sources. GOP reliance on Fox is deepening, which means those folks increasingly inhabit a bubble that reflects a version of reality that always confirms their beliefs and never challenges them with inconvenient facts.

The second is that Dems/liberals do NOT inhabit their own bubble of reality. MSNBC has never been a mirror reflection of Fox News for liberals (that is, carefully-curated stories with a hefty dose of fake news), but even if it were, liberals just don’t rely on it as much. It’s the eighth most trusted source, the fourth-most consumed. 

There’s a common refrain that partisans live in their own little worlds and polarization results from equal “epistemic closure.” I think the view persists because it’s less painful to consider than the plain reality: that one bloc has removed itself from public dialogue and will only accept a false version of the news that supports their beliefs.


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