Media and Information

How Broadcast and Social Media Drive Polarization

During the last 50 years, three major developments in our media and information landscape have turned it into a polarizing force in US society and politics. The first was the transformation and deregulation of broadcast media. 

Up until the 1980s, just three national television networks dominated the market, and they were required to provide balanced political content based on a federal regulation known as the Fairness Doctrine. The emergence of cable television and the revocation of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 triggered an explosion of new media outlets, including networks focused on bringing explicitly partisan content to conservative (e.g., Fox News) and liberal (e.g., MSNBC) audiences.⁴ In parallel, nationally syndicated political talk radio supplanted musical programming as the dominant format for struggling AM radio stations. In both television and radio, a programming format centered on delivering partisan political commentary took shape as a profitable business model.⁵  

The second major shift is the rise of social media. Social media is governed by algorithms that seek to optimize user engagement. It so happens that divisive content, disinformation, and hate speech are all highly engaging for users. In effect, social media’s algorithms and design features unleash our tribal identities and our hard-wired tendency to define ourselves in opposition to an outgroup, encouraging and amplifying the spread of content that stokes our partisan animosities.

"Facebook repeatedly encountered conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved those conflicts in favor of its own profits. The result has been a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization." ~ Frances Haugen, Facebook whistleblower

The demise of local news—a topic Battery Powered explored in 2022—is the third major polarizing change in the media landscape. During the last 20 years, as the internet captured advertising revenue that was the financial backbone of local newspapers, 2,100 newspapers have disappeared, turning at least 1,800 communities into “news deserts” that lack even a single local paper. Without access to local reporting, people rely on an increasingly partisan landscape of national news sources for their political information. Local news is a depolarizing force in US society: research indicates that voters without local news sources in their communities exhibit more partisan voting behaviors, as do members of Congress. 

Source: Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The News Landscape in 2020.

Taken together, the impact of these changes in the media and information landscape has been dramatic. Political news is far less balanced than it used to be and is geared toward ginning up partisan outrage. Americans increasingly self-select news that reinforces and amplifies their political beliefs. And with fewer local newspapers to offer them coverage, politicians pander to uncompromisingly partisan cable and talk radio hosts and audiences⁶ and turn to social media for attention, submitting themselves to the logic of algorithms that reward partisan militancy and outrage and marginalize thoughtful discourse. 

Depolarizing the Media and Information Landscape:

How Philanthropy Can Help

There are two categories of interventions philanthropy can support for depolarizing the media and information environment: increasing access to quality news and healthy digital communications platforms, and curbing the harms of the dominant, corporate media ecosystem. In other words, we must proactively build a public square designed for thoughtful, civil discourse and dedicated to the public interest, while reining in a profit-driven media system that thrives on enmity and division.

Increasing access to quality news and healthy digital spaces 
As the old revenue models for local news have collapsed, many advocates and experts have come to recognize that sustaining and expanding high-quality local journalism will require infusions of philanthropic and public capital. Philanthropic initiatives like NewsMatch and Press Forward are channeling resources to local, nonprofit news outlets and local news ecosystems. A federal tax on digital advertising could generate significant public funding for high-quality, non-commercial local news, and some have proposed tax credits to support high-quality commercial journalism. Other efforts are focused on improving the quality of journalism. For example, Good Conflict and Solutions Journalism Network promote storytelling practices that build social trust and instill a sense of agency and hope in our collective ability to solve societal problems.  

Battery Powered explored how to support a diverse ecosystem of quality news and information in our winter 2022 JOURNALISM & MEDIA theme

While bolstering high-quality traditional journalism can increase the supply of balanced, nonpartisan news and information, we must also reshape the architecture of digital platforms that govern what news people see and share with each other. The media scholar Ethan Zuckerman has argued that we need to create social media platforms, search engines, and online communities that are community controlled and governed by civic rather than market values—what Zuckerman terms “digital public infrastructure.” New_Public is a community of practitioners seeking to carry out this vision, by creating and testing new digital public spaces based on principles of inclusion, belonging, and shared meaning and action. Zuckerman has proposed that a tax on digital advertising could help create and scale a democratically and civically oriented online space that can counterbalance the polarizing impacts of the dominant, profit-oriented platforms. 

Reducing the harms of corporate broadcast and digital media 
Even while we work to create healthier news sources and digital spaces, we must reckon directly with the media institutions and social media platforms that are reaching and engaging the largest audiences and that often profit off our enmity and division. Public accountability campaigns, litigation, and government regulation are three levers for moderating the polarizing impacts of corporate media and tech.  
 
Advocacy groups such as Free Press, Media Matters, and Disinfo Defense League organize public campaigns to hold broadcast and social media companies accountable for their role in disseminating hate speech and racialized disinformation. Public exposure of these issues can deprive media companies and digital platforms of advertising revenue and create incentives for them to moderate such content.  

JRdes / Shutterstock

In some cases, the spread of political disinformation is unlawful and can be checked through litigation. Dominion Voting’s successful defamation suit against Fox News for spreading lies that Dominion helped fix the 2020 election resulted in a $787.5 million settlement. By imposing significant financial damages, this kind of legal accountability places guardrails on the dissemination of the most egregious forms of partisan disinformation. Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group focused on preventing the rise of authoritarianism, is one organization that engages in strategic litigation to prevent political disinformation.

 Finally, new government regulations could moderate the polarizing impacts of social media. For example, privacy protections that restrict the data that platforms can collect on users blunt the ability of advertisers, bad actors, and the platforms’ own algorithms to target people with disinformation or other polarizing content. The European Union has taken a step in this direction by enacting the Digital Services Act, which restricts internet companies from using data on users’ political beliefs for advertising. While there are considerable political hurdles to regulating the tech industry in the US, advocates have made significant progress in Europe and California in recent years, with spillover effects in other markets.