New research co-authored at UC Berkeley finds that loyal liberal viewers of MSNBC and CNN and conservative devotees of Fox News have a tendency to get locked in to partisan echo chambers. (Illustration by Neil Freese)
A startling number of Americans are in “partisan echo chambers,” where they only consume TV news that reinforces their existing political and social biases, according to new research co-authored at UC Berkeley.
In a time of growing concern about divisive media and rising polarization, the new study by Berkeley political scientist David E. Broockman and Berkeley alumnus Joshua L. Kalla of Yale University found that one in five registered Republicans watches at least eight hours of right-wing Fox News per month. Some 15% of Democrats watch a similar amount of coverage on networks MSNBC and CNN.
David Broockman (UC Berkeley photo)
These numbers represent tens of millions of American TV consumers, Broockman said, some of them already strong partisans, but many whose views are not yet extreme. That suggests a significant bloc of voters could become more extreme and perhaps polarized by a media diet that does not include a more balanced mix of information.
“Most people who tune in to Fox News lean to the right, but Fox draws them further to the right,” Broockman said. “Likewise, MSNBC is pulling those to the left further left. And neither side almost ever watches the other.”
The new research offers a troubling reflection on the American media environment and on risks to the nation’s democracy.
A case in point came just this week, when Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle claims by Dominion Voting Systems that the network had repeatedly broadcast erroneous reports about fraud associated with Dominion machines — claims that Fox executives and on-air stars apparently knew to be false.
Still, a recent poll found that nearly two-thirds of Republicans continue to believe that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidential election through fraud.
The new research, “Selective Exposure and Partisan Echo Chambers in Television News Consumption: Evidence from Linked Viewership, Administrative, and Survey Data,” was released online. It remains under peer review.
It follows a related paper published by the authors a year ago in which loyal Fox News viewers, after a month of watching CNN instead, reported a broad shift in their political opinions.
The two studies, taken together, “show us that there are a lot of people in partisan echo chambers,” Broockman said. “But our work shows that getting them out of these echo chambers would moderate their views and reduce polarization.”
