Divided Together: Social Media's Impact on Rising Political Polarization (Critical Approach to Digital Cultures)

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Contemporary U.S. politics, especially after the 2016 election, have become more polarized than they ever were, with political candidates reflecting this. President Trump was one

of the most inflammatory candidates ever to run for President, and on the left, polarization has proceeded as well, if more slowly—Trump, and before him, the Tea Party, is the face of the mainstream Republican Party, whereas more extreme left-wing figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are merely prominent, not fixtures of the mainstream

Democratic Party. Polarization shows itself when Americans are asked their opinions on pivotal issues such as gun control or abortion (Bail et. al, 9216). These issues have always been able to spark debate—it is nothing new that Catholics are anti-abortion, for example—but the differences of opinion are seen as more significant now than in the past. And people are now more likely than ever to hold the views on these issues associated with their partisan identities (Bail, 9216), to the extent that partisanship predicts an individual’s opinion nearly three times better than any other factor (education, class, race, etc.). In 1960, only 5 percent of Republicans and Democrats reported that they would be ‘displeased’ if their child married someone with a different partisan identification, and in 2010, that number skyrocketed to 30 percent of Democrats and almost 50 percent of Republicans (Boxell et. al, 2). In the advent of the Trump era those numbers might be expected to be higher, though no follow-up data has been collected.

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Divided Together: Social Media's Impact on Rising Political Polarization (Critical Approach to Digital Cultures)

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