When Attention Concentrates and When It Diffuses: Media, Identity, and Democratic Tension

• In Event: Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 7. Identity, moral boundaries, & nationalism

Abstract

This paper examines how partisan media infrastructures shape political identity and democratic conflict in the contemporary United States. Drawing on an original dataset of 15,506 comments posted between 2018 and 2025 on six major partisan news sites, the paper argues that current democratic tensions cannot be explained by polarization or misinformation alone. They are infrastructural. Media systems allocate attention differently, and these allocation patterns condition how identities are stabilized, performed, and mobilized. The analysis shows a consistent asymmetry. Right-leaning attention infrastructures concentrate visibility through tightly integrated elite cueing, cross-platform reinforcement, and narrative repetition. This concentration produces portable identity scripts, moral convergence, and—under conditions of perceived threat—a shift from interpretive debate to mobilization readiness. Identity becomes thick, saturated, and action-oriented. Left-leaning infrastructures, by contrast, diffuse attention across issue publics, institutions, and advocacy networks. Identity is articulated through procedural norms, institutional critique, and argumentative engagement rather than through a single charismatic or moral anchor. Even when incivility is present, liberal forums more frequently sustain internal disagreement and evidentiary correction. Identity remains thinner, more situational, and less synchronized. Comment sections make these dynamics visible at the micro level. Usernames, profile cues, and conversational patterns reveal how infrastructures reward certain forms of identity performance while penalizing others. The result is a structural democratic dilemma: attention concentration generates power and coordination but increases the risks of epistemic closure and dehumanization, while attention diffusion sustains deliberation and accountability but weakens collective capacity. The paper concludes that democratic reform requires confronting not only ideological division but the infrastructural organization of attention itself.

Author

• Deana Rohlinger, Florida State University