Study: Participation and Polarization are a Package Deal
BY Nancy Scola | Friday, March 12 2010
They say that the political blogosphere is more polarized than the world at large. For once, there's actually a "they" there -- GW professors Eric Lawrence, John Sides, and Henry Farrell (via Andrew Sullivan). Their new study finds that 94% of readers of political blogs only political blogs on their own side of the ideological spectrum. Here's the abstract:
We find that blog readers gravitate toward blogs that accord with their political beliefs. Few read blogs on both the left and right of the ideological spectrum. Furthermore, those who read left-wing blogs and those who read right-wing blogs are ideologically far apart. Blog readers are more polarized than either non-blog-readers or consumers of various television news programs, and roughly as polarized as US senators. Blog readers also participate more in politics than nonblog readers. Readers of blogs of different ideological dispositions do not participate less than those who read only blogs of one ideological disposition. Instead, readers of both left- and right-wing blogs and readers of exclusively leftwing blogs participate at similar levels, and both participate more than readers of exclusively right-wing blogs. This may reflect social movement-building efforts by left-wing bloggers.
Here's where it gets particularly interesting for our purposes. Research cited in the study finds that, contra the current state of blog reading practices, exposure to a wider range of political perspectives helps to make blog readers more tolerant. But it is also associated with depressed levels of political engagement. To flip it around, you consume more news (online, and, perhaps, on cable TV) and get more politically engaged -- but it's a polarized, less tolerant engagement. Tricky. Grab a copy of Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation, and Polarization in American Politics here.