How Do News Frames Influence Mass Political Polarization?

• In Event: Media Influences on Political Polarization

Abstract

This study attempts to explore how journalistic routine leads to political polarization. News media and journalists tend to focus on political conflicts between major parties. Does this news reporting behavior encourage the psychological processes of polarization? By linking framing theory with social identity and self-categorization, this study explores how news frames affect political polarization through party identification processes. The results of an experimental study showed that political conflict news frame can accentuate party identity salience and that such salience is a key factor in explaining partisans’ political polarization over an issue. Political conflict news frame plays an important role as a contextual/situational factor that momentarily increases people’s political identity salience, resulting in perceptual and attitudinal political polarization. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Authors

• Youngju Kim, U of Alabama

• Shuhua Zhou, U of Alabama