(iPoster) Conservative Media Familiarity and Political Attitudes in the Partisan Mind

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Polarization, Identity, and Democratic Vulnerability & Political Communication I
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Communication I

Abstract

Research suggests that the agendas, content, and frames of especially conservative media may contribute to political polarization (Prior 2013, Stroud 2011, Tyler, Grimmer, and Iyengar 2022, Levendusky 2013). However, scholars have yet to fully explore the relationships between media consumption and attitudes that might explain the dynamics of those effects. Doing so is important given recent evidence that ideological media have large, devoted, and non-monolithic audiences (Broockman and Kalla 2025b). Using the 2024 ANES, this paper examines the correlates of familiarity with conservative media programs with a variety of political attitudes and gives special attention to relationships with the attitudes of Republicans.
Results show that conservative media familiarity (measured according to the number of conservative news shows respondents mentioned watching regularly) shares few significant relationships with most Republican attitudes, including those associated with governmental trust, emotions about politics, and racial stereotypes (such as whether blacks are violent or lazy). Such findings suggest an endogeneity between Republican belief systems and conservative media narratives (Arceneaux and Johnson 2013).
Exceptions in which Republican attitudes appear to be modified by conservative media familiarity deal almost exclusively with whether or how government should/not be used to address societal problems. Regarding attitudes that propose to address racial and economic inequality, economic mobility, and climate change, conservative media amplified conservative attitudes among Republicans, consistent with opposition to using government to address such problems. Conservative media also amplified conservative attitudes that government should reduce immigration, despite sharing few relationships with Republican attitudes towards immigrants or earned pathways to citizenship. These findings suggest that conservative media primarily influences Republican attitudes towards the role of government on specific policies and regulations.
Familiarity with conservative media shared systematically different relationships with the attitudes expressed by Democrats. In nearly every attitude examined in which a statistically significant divide occurred between Democrats and Republicans (i.e. cases where partisans expressed significantly more and less agreement with a position compared to independents), familiarity with conservative media amplified liberal positions among Democrats. The consistency of these findings suggests a relationship resulting from self-selection, whereby attentive and committed Democrats are both more familiar with and opposed to conservative media. Alternatively, such findings appear consistent with the possibility of “motivated reasoning” and rejection of conservative messages by Democrats, though recent experimental research casts some doubt on that theory (Broockman and Kalla 2025a).
Familiarity with conservative media sources on the part of independents shared very limited and non-systematic relationships with political attitudes. One interpretation of these findings is that conservative media’s influence is limited when it comes to persuading moderates. Alternatively, independents may be generally less attentive to or evaluative of ideological media even when they express familiarity.
Taken together, these findings suggest that conservative media shares very different and asymmetric relationships with the attitudes of voters from different partisan persuasions. Much of the significance (or in the case of Republicans, insignificance) of these relationships may result from self-selection. However, conservative media may nonetheless play an important role in shaping Republican attitudes about the role of government on policy and regulation in ways that undergird the agenda of the Republican Party.
Arceneaux, Kevin, and Martin Johnson. 2013. Changing minds or changing channels?: Partisan news in an age of choice: University of Chicago Press.
Broockman, David E., and Joshua L. Kalla. 2025a. "Consuming Cross-Cutting Media Causes Learning and Moderates Attitudes: A Field Experiment with Fox News Viewers." 87 (1):246-261. doi: 10.1086/730725.
Broockman, David E., and Joshua L. Kalla. 2025b. "Selective exposure and echo chambers in partisan television consumption: Evidence from linked viewership, administrative, and survey data." 69 (3):847-865. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12886.
Levendusky, Matthew. 2013. How partisan media polarize America: University of Chicago Press.
Prior, Markus %J Annual review of political science. 2013. "Media and political polarization." 16 (1):101-127.
Stroud, Natalie Jomini. 2011. Niche news: The politics of news choice: Oxford University Press.
Tyler, Matthew, Justin Grimmer, and Shanto %J The Journal of Politics Iyengar. 2022. "Partisan enclaves and information bazaars: Mapping selective exposure to online news." 84 (2):1057-1073.

Author

• Walter Wilson, University of Texas, San Antonio