Innovative use of data yields unprecedented insights

The new Broockman-Kalla study is based on data sets that have never before been tapped by political researchers: data from smart TVs on consumption of partisan and national broadcast news; data from Nielsen Media Research on consumption of partisan and national broadcast news used by its survey subjects, tied to data on their voter party registration; data from TV cable boxes on the media consumption habits; and data from TV consumption diaries tied to survey data on political party affiliation.

Among the findings:

• About 1 in 7 Americans consumes over eight hours of partisan media per month. This group outnumbers newspaper subscribers and the viewership of nonpartisan national broadcast news.
• Some 32% of Fox viewers identify as strong Republicans, but another 42% range from less partisan Republicans to independents. A similar pattern prevails among viewers of CNN and MSNBC: 36% report strong Democratic identity, with 42% less partisan Democrats and independents.
• Among registered Republicans, only 13% of those who watch over eight hours of Fox News every month also watch at least one hour per month of nonpartisan national broadcast news. Among registered Democrats, 36% have such diversity in their media diet. And only single-digit percentages in either party crossed over to watch four hours from the other side’s network.

Such numbers lead the authors to a key conclusion that holds across both sides: “Partisans who consume their side’s partisan media largely do inhabit partisan echo chambers.”

Media and opinion: cracking a stubborn mystery

For a century, the authors say, researchers have been trying to draw reliable connections between voters’ consumption of political media and their political attitudes. But understanding has been elusive. Surveys have been considered the best way to make such assessments, but people aren’t always reliable when they’re reporting what sorts of media they consume, and how much of it.

Trust has so fractured among competing U.S. cultures and communities that millions of Americans do not believe the verifiable fact of Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020. (Photo by Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA via AP)

In recent years, the question has grown more acute. Local newspapers and TV stations, once the staple of American news consumption, have been decimated by the rise of online communication and the decline of advertising revenue. Fox, CNN and MSNBC have been at the vanguard of a cultural shift toward more opinionated news shows.

In 2007, Berkeley economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ethan Kaplan (Kaplan is now at the University of Maryland) published ground-breaking research with a prescient conclusion: Fox News was having a significant effect on raising votes for Republican candidates.

But those findings have remained a focus of scholarly disagreement, Broockman said. Some researchers have expressed skepticism that in a nation of over 300 million people, the new-era partisan broadcasts would have the power to shift many votes. There were too few viewers, some scholars concluded, and most viewers were bound to hear different sources of information. The Broockman-Kalla paper shows that DellaVigna and Kaplan’s worries were well-founded.

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