Political Polarization Research Paper

Social Media has arguably become one of the fastest and effective ways of spreading news information. This has become a vital part of the identity of social media because news information is how citizens find out and create opinions about politics. The changing role of media has allowed for an unprecedented amount of user interactions between sources and other users as well. As a result, social media has played a role in the political polarization that is becoming further divided. The Pew Research Center surveyed 10,000 adults on their political views and the center discovered that Political Polarization is the most prominent that it has been in over twenty years. Political Polarization in this sense is the degree to which liberals and conservatives

Consequently, when there is such high political polarization it is almost impossible to find a middle ground that satisfies both parties. (Suh 6) it is important that we look at how social media plays a role in creating Partisanship due to its growing importance in terms of providing political information to people. Furthermore, social media assists in creating polarization by creating a space in which users can view information that agrees with their political identities. However, in order to do so we must discuss the how social media has fundamentally changed the consumption of news and how this has created a significant importance of social media in terms of the news. Social media creates a space in which one can become completely isolated from opposing views causing an increase their own political identification through a sense of

This is crucial to understanding the importance of social media because traditional news sources originally decided how a news story would be portrayed to the public which could be a part of a specific agenda. This traditional media did not allow for consumers to communicate openly with those who were in charge of producing the information as communication was limited to a specific location such as a letter to the editor. Hanifi Kurt wrote a journal article in which he discussed the how social media has changed journalism. For example, social media has created a completely new platform that does not place any limits on how users can communicate with publishers. For example, social media enables readers to be active participants and even creates a space for citizens to publish content themselves which helps social media to have an abundance of information and content. Not only is social media creating a new unlimited connection with the consumers and publishers, but it is also creating a new source of news now known as citizen news that allows for citizens to get the viewpoint of someone who is of a similar political status to them (Kurt 824). The connection that social media is allowing to be established between creators and consumers of news is related to partisanship because much of the interactions that users are having with news sources are related to their own ideological views.