Article Summary
Introduction
Since the early 1990s, partisan television channels like Fox News and MSNBC have exploded in popularity. Content on these channels tends to be uncivil, but relatively little existing work has explored the political implications of this incivility. These authors explore the effects of partisan media’s “personal” incivility—slurs, threats, disrespect, and general impoliteness—when it is directed at the opposing party (e.g., when Fox News is uncivil to Democrats or MSNBC is uncivil to Republicans). The authors suggest that when people see their own party being uncivil (e.g., when Democrats see incivility from other Democrats on MSNBC), it alienates them and makes them feel more distant from their own party. Because this distancing process makes people like their own party less, it should result in reduced affective polarization. In contrast, when people see incivility from the other party (e.g., when Democrats see incivility from Republicans on Fox News), it will make them dislike the other party more, resulting in increased affective polarization. Finally, the authors suggest that the effects of incivility will be stronger for people who are generally uncomfortable with conflict because they view it as especially problematic and impolite.
Analytical Approach
To explore the effects of incivility, the authors conduct an experiment on a nationally representative sample of about 5,000 people. They begin by asking some demographic questions and a measure of how comfortable or uncomfortable people are with conflict (i.e., their conflict orientation). Then, the authors randomly assign participants to one of four conditions in which they read (fake) text transcripts of partisan media. Participants read either a civil or an uncivil segment from either Fox News or MSNBC. All four versions of the story focused on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, with the MSNBC segment opposing the pipelines and the Republican segment supporting them. In the civil versions, the host of the segment disagrees with the other party’s position, but they do so largely respectfully. In the uncivil versions, the host of the segment repeatedly insults the other party, calling them (for example) “parasitic” and “despicable.” In addition, the civil stories featured a photo of the host appearing calm, and the uncivil stories featured a photo of the host appearing angry.
After participants read the story, they were asked to report their favorable and unfavorable feelings toward the parties, then their thermometer ratings of the parties (i.e., how warm or cold they feel toward each party on a 0-100 scale), and finally their trust that each party does what is right for the country.
For the purposes of their analysis, the authors focus on exposure to media from participants’ own party vs. the other party. In other words, they combine Democrats shown MSNBC stories with Republicans shown Fox stories, and they combine Republicans shown MSNBC stories with Democrats shown Fox stories. By doing so, they essentially discard baseline differences between the sources, focusing instead on how people respond to civility and incivility from their own party and the other party.
Main Findings
People who saw incivility from their own party became substantially less affectively polarized: they were less favorable toward their own party and more favorable toward the other party. The opposite was true for people who saw incivility from the opposing party. These people became more affectively polarized, liking their own party more and the opposing party less. That is, incivility from in-party partisan media can depolarize, but incivility from out-party partisan media can polarize.
There was not much strong evidence that these effects were stronger for people who were uncomfortable with conflict (compared to people comfortable with conflict). There were hints of differences based on conflict orientation, but the results were weak and mixed. It is clear from the data, however, that the effects of incivility—depolarizing when it comes from the in-party, polarizing when it comes from the out-party—were significant even for people quite tolerant of conflict. Audiences for partisan media tend to be fairly tolerant of conflict, so this finding emphasizes the practical importance of the study’s conclusions.
Implications
This study suggests a surprising dynamic. Even though many people watch media that supports their party, and even though this media is frequently uncivil, this in-party incivility is unlikely to make people more polarized. Instead, it alienates people from their own party and makes them less affectively polarized. In other words, the potential harms of incivility on partisan media may be limited given that people mostly watch their own party’s sources. However, the authors emphasize that incivility is only one component of partisan media. These television channels also present information with a strong partisan slant: Republicans watching Fox News and Democrats watching MSNBC may be uncomfortable with the incivility they see, but they also see a lot of content that reinforces their existing positions. Indeed, past work (e.g., Levendusky, 2013) shows that exposure to partisan media tends to polarize people overall despite the depolarizing effects of incivility. Incivility matters, then, but so does slant. Researchers interested in the effects of partisan media need to consider both. Despite the (small) bit of optimism this study provides about exposure to incivility from people’s own party, it is clear that exposure to incivility from the opposing party makes people much more polarized. It is unclear how often people encounter clips and stories from opposing-party media, but this is a potentially important topic for future work.
Questions left unanswered
The authors highlight three major questions for future work. First, they suggest that people who become more affectively polarized from partisan media may act uncivilly, the effects of partisan media may spread through interpersonal interactions. That is, people may observe members of the other party behaving uncivilly and become uncivil themselves. Second, the authors call for research on other kinds of incivility. Here, they study text-based personal disrespect from news show hosts. Do people respond differently to video or audio clips of incivility? What about other kinds of incivility entirely (e.g., threats of violence)? Are the effects of incivility different when it comes from politicians instead of news anchors, or when it happens during an election? Third and finally, the authors emphasize the importance of future work examining the separate and combined effects of slant and incivility on partisan media.
Methods and Analysis
Was the study and its analyses pre-registered?: Yes
Did the study rely on proxy variables to measure polarization?: No
Were standard p-value thresholds used (p<.05 or 95% Confidence Intervals that don’t overlap zero)?: Yes
- Largest p-value presented as significant: 0.05
Were correlational results interpreted with causal language?: No
Limitations / Weaknesses
The experiment in this study uses text stimuli to convey incivility. However, incivility is much more intense when presented through videos or even audio stimuli. Thus, their conclusions may be somewhat understated, particularly regarding the role of conflict orientation.
Although people were alienated by in-party incivility regarding the pipelines, this was only a moderately important issue and it did not happen during an election campaign. Participants may well have felt that the incivility was unwarranted given the relatively low stakes. However, these results might look quite different were the experiment conducted on a highly polarizing topic or during an election campaign. In that context, any incivility might seem justified given the immediate threat of the opposing party or their intensely different opinions. Without replicating this study in other contexts and with other issues, we should be cautious to generalize its conclusions too broadly.
Open Data & Analyses
Does the article make the replication data publicly available?: Yes
Does the article make the replication analysis scripts publicly available?: Yes
Article Citation
Druckman, J. N., Gubitz, S. R., Levendusky, M. S., & Lloyd, A. M. (2019). How incivility on partisan media (de)polarizes the electorate. The Journal of Politics, 81(1), 291–295. https://doi.org/10.1086/699912
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article{doi:10.1086/699912,
author = {Druckman, James N. and Gubitz, S. R. and Levendusky, Matthew S. and Lloyd, Ashley M.},
title = {How Incivility on Partisan Media (De)Polarizes the Electorate},
journal = {The Journal of Politics},
volume = {81},
number = {1},
pages = {291-295},
year = {2019},
doi = {10.1086/699912},
URL = {https://doi.org/10.1086/699912},
eprint = {https://doi.org/10.1086/699912}
}