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Foxnews.com breaking news headlines4/9/2023 In an age when we have become more socially sorted, we have become more enthusiastic about our side - and angrier about the other side. It has taken place on both sides, of course, but according to Mason and co-author Julia Wronski, Republicans tend to be a lot more sorted by demographics: Sorting has been an asymmetrical phenomenon, however. As Mason puts it, “As social sorting increases in the American electorate, the cooler heads inspired by cross-cutting identities are likely to be taking up a smaller portion of the electorate.” The dynamic tends to lead to a more overheated discourse. Instead, we instinctively jump to the partisan conclusion because it’s how we protect our identities. This means that more and more of us have a hard time looking at political information and coming to rational conclusions. In other words, the more sorted socially you are, the more intense your reaction might be to, say, a news story that casts your party or issue preferences in a good or bad light. Among the things she has found is that sorting has the effect of intensifying our emotions in response to political messages. University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason has been studying the implications of this sorting. And the flip side is also true: People who are nonwhite, secular, and liberal have aligned with Democrats. There’s also a high likelihood that you’re also white and Christian. Today, if you’re a conservative, there’s a high likelihood that you’re Republican. We live in an age when our political identities have merged with our other identities.ĭecades ago, it was more likely for a Democrat to also be, say, a conservative. But the problem goes beyond partisan polarization. The best way to think of Fox News is that it’s an identity-reinforcing machine. ![]() Why does this alternate reality resonate so much with its viewers? And why are those viewers so impervious to any story that clashes with the Fox News reality? Fox News and social sorting If special counsel Robert Mueller indicts Trump, it will seem unreasonable if Trump doesn’t win reelection in 2020 by a landslide, it will seem like it’s because the FBI and mainstream media colluded to smear Trump. (The same survey found that Clinton voters did not congregate around a single media source in the way Trump voters did.) And Trump voters who live in the Fox News reality have been shielded from the plethora of reasons Trump is embroiled in scandal. This is no longer the case.įox News and its alternate reality is by far the main source of political news for many Trump voters. When President Nixon faced impeachment, one thing that made it possible was the media agreed on a certain set of facts.
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