By Zach Weigel
Despite what media outlets and political rhetoric suggests, the nation is not polarized along ideological lines. By this I mean to say that our nation is not as divided as we are led to believe. And I’m not just throwing this claim out there without any evidence. Data from the Pew Research Center show that this is not the case.
First, it is necessary to define exactly what polarization is. In a political context, polarization refers to phenomena in which political opinions are split between two poles: Democratic and Republican. Meaning if our nation were polarized, then more Americans would opt to identify as either Democrats or Republicans as opposed to independents, not the current situation in which the proportion of people identifying as independent is at its highest levels. Gallup’s most recent analysis shows 42 percent of American voters identifying as independents.
So why is there this thought out there that our nation is polarized? Well for starters, years of congressional gridlock and the divisiveness of the most recent presidential election clearly signal that politics in our country is quite contentious. But this doesn’t necessarily mean the American public is polarized. Rather than the populous, it is the elites (a.k.a., politicians and pundits) which have become more polarized.
Why is this? Notably, segmentation of media has created a situation in which people are able to seek out information that fits the contours of their ideology. Take Fox News or CNN for example. These cable networks are able to craft the news to fit what their viewers want to see, effectively creating a niche designed to cater to their viewers.
Facebook and Twitter are no different. The stories that show up on your feed aren’t random. The content of stories on these social-media platforms are selectively filtered both by users and computer algorithms such that what you see is specific to you. It’s an unintended consequence of having so much information at our fingertips; what we see isn’t as diverse as we’d like to think it is. Rather, our feeds are subliminally crafted to our particular interests, making us think that our beliefs are more different than those who hold beliefs at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. Essentially, media segmentation has made it so that we are exposed less to those with different views, which makes us less tolerant of contrasting views.
And how does being exposed to less diverse information cause us to be less tolerant? The answer lies in psychological processes. Social-identity theory holds that by mainly being exposed to information that specifically caters to us we develop an identity. In order to maintain our identity (as a Democrat or Republican), we then seek out things that confirm our identity while dismissing and vilifying those things that are contrary to our identity. Thus, we begin to interpret information through a partisan or ideological lens that colors our understanding and subsequent interactions with others such that we overlook similarities and focus on differences. Maybe that’s why conversations today have a habit of becoming combative rather than constructive.
Now why does all this matter? The façade of polarization means that there is hope for our country to heal the wounds that the recent election has facilitated. Now we know that it just seems like we are polarized because of psychological process and media segmentation. And with this knowledge we might be able to build some bridges by setting aside our identities in an effort to reach some common ground.