Political Polarization and the Framing of Income Inequality in News Media and Social Media

• In Event: Frames in the News: Where Do They Come From?

Abstract

This study explored political polarization on social media in the U.S. using the widely recognized social issue of income inequality, a new political battleground in the 2016 presidential election. Political and media scholars are concerned that social media will accentuate the polarization and fragmentation found in news media. To test that concern, the study utilized a full year of news articles and Twitter posts in all 50 states mentioning income inequality through a third-party big data search system. The most common frames of inequality were identified through literature and national surveys then used to compare how two types of media (news and social) differed in framing the income inequality and how those frames differed across Democratic and Republican states. We found that news media differed significantly by political ideology but the Twitter conversation did not. Findings are interpreted through issue ownership theory and the concept of frame ownership.

Authors

• Christopher Frear, University of South Carolina

• Anan Wan, University of South Carolina

• Seung Mo Jang, U of South Carolina