Look Up at That Mansion on the Hill: Does Mass Media Activate Resentment?

• In Event: Media Effects

Abstract

While the politics of resentment looms large as an explanation for Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, little attention has been paid to the role of the mass media in transforming the economic and social grievances at the heart of these resentments into electoral outcomes. Hypothesizing that a necessary feature of resentment is comparison to a relatively better off group (like affluent urban whites) and/or a group perceived to be receiving special favors (like poor racial and ethnic minorities), we investigate the degree to which exposure to large cities via the media serves as an activating variable in driving rural areas towards the populist message of Trump. Merging together county level data on socio-demographic factors, the opioid crisis, the geographies of media markets, and electoral outcomes, we show that the effects of addiction and economic misery on electoral shifts towards the Republican party in 2016 are stronger in rural counties that are part of the media markets of large cities, and weaker in neighboring counties which happen to be in smaller media markets. This finding is important because it helps us better understand the key role of mass media in structuring the way that individuals interpret their socio-demographic and geographic contexts, and how those interpretations translate into the political world.

Authors

• Marc Trussler, Washington University in St. Louis

• Michael Shepherd, Vanderbilt University