Relatively Few Americans Live in Partisan Media Bubble, but They’re Influential

One of the dangers of these types of surveys is that there is no "pole in the ground" that you can compare things to over time.

But, what we CAN do is compare ourselves to OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRIES. It is CLEAR to me that the U.S. (and its precedent the UK) has drifted ever more to the right since the 1980s.

So what can be seen in polls as "middle of the road" today would NOT have been back in the 1970s. In that context, most of the voters and the media in the survey would be center right (NOT center left).

It just goes to show that the Boomers have just followed the traditional route that they became more conservative (like their parents they rebelled against) as they became older. And, the 2016 election is between the vision of the retiring generation and the vision of the next generation that will have to take over the mess the world is in these days.

Well done study for people who get their news online - sounds like it might miss the large segment of the population that mainly watches or listens to news though.

Pew research in my opinion, a worthy polling establishment, recently showed a high percentage of Americans don't trust the media, as the media is biased. Saw Dan Rather interviewed by CNN, about this debacle we call a election campaign. He pointed out CNN is benefiting by their over the top Rhetoric about Trump, and not engaging in, in-depth old style investigative journalism. Point is, both CNN and Fox are all hype, with only their ratings in mind. Social media is wide open for anyone to say anything. Some balance of the real issues I find on the Brookings web and for counter American Enterprise Institute web. Of course many staunch republicans or Democrats will only read what suits their position. Example Trump is dangerous, or the Clintons are crooks, take your pick.

How is NYT defining the "liberalism" or "conservatism" of a media outlet here? Is it according to who uses the media outlet most? (hopefully not, since that would be tautological) Is it the amount and intensity of right or left slant the outlet applies in reporting a story, or the choice of which stories to report?

To illustrate my question: is NYT here considered "liberal" because it for example chooses to write a story on a major new scientific finding that indicates global warming is accelerating, and treats global warming as a fact rather than just one side in a still-open debate? That's not a "liberal" stance; it's "factual."

I try avoid getting my news from sources that color their news reporting with opinions, as Fox infamously does, and seek sources that seem to try to cover all major stories likely to have a big effect on the U.S. and the world. But I consider this kind of source to be "centrist," not "liberal" -- even if it's the kind of source that squares with my "liberal" interest in science and confirmable fact.

When the media writes about the media, they need to be careful not to unquestioningly accept and parrot the labels they hear about themselves. Just because the right labels any fact-based media outlets as "liberal" doesn't mean those outlets report with a leftward slant.

"Facts have a liberal bias" is a rueful liberal in-joke about how conservatives see the news media. It's not a basis for fact-based media to accuse itself of nonexistent bias.

This survey misses some very important points.

Fox Faked News (FFN) is on all day long in many Republicans areas in bars, restaurants, businesses and homes. Then, the faithful gather round in the evening to hear the hard, sharp opinions backed by small evidence and big assumptions. If you can preach to people four, five, six hours a day, you own them. The Republican party, attempting to build a sympathetic media stream, ceded leadership of the their party to right wing media.

This applies to right wing radio in America, too. Keep in mind, NEVER in American history has one political view been able to dominate an entire medium of distribution. Now, they do, on AM talk radio from coast to coast.

The combination of right wing media means they can pound a message home relentlessly. It includes websites, sympathetic newspapers (like the Dallas Morning News), AM talk radio, Fox Faked News, even C-SPAN (which was started by a right winger and credited by Newt Gingrich with helping Republicans win a majority in the House in 1994), all toe the line. The Republican media minders in DC gather and the word goes out across the land.

The danger, also, is that members of Congress and other influential people live inside this echo chamber. In time, it comes to seem that the right wing view is not only right, but it is the only one that matters.

I notice that the dividing line between "liberal" and "conservative" on the x-axis is skewed so far left that, at least in the top set of charts, even Republicans show a media diet that is primarily liberal.

Also, do you think that the New York Times is as liberal as you show it to be? Perhaps conservatives are more likely to see themselves as middle-of-the-road, while liberals correctly identify themselves as more liberal than the main-stream media.

That would lead to readers of the New York Times seeing themselves as more liberal than the New York Times, which represents the main-stream media to them. Moreover, as the New York Times becomes increasingly conservative (as it has during my lifetime), its readers increasingly appear to themselves as "liberal" relative to the newspaper they use as a benchmark. That distorts the "ideology" axis for the bottom chart.

C'mon - you can;t compare NYT with Fox News. A more apt comparison would be WSJ.

The phenomenon of a person seeking to have their assumptions confirmed goes back a good thirty -forty years to a time when the old dying network news operations varied wildly from the pre-Limbaugh radio news independents like Paul Harvey.

Now that the lines are clearly marked, with CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and most large city dailies in blood-oath compacts with Democratic Party political correctness and Fox being the electronic alternative, it is past time for both sides to include at least one solid disagreeing outlet.

Fox News fans can try MS-NBC early in the day and Trump haters can start with independent Megyn Kelly @ Fox News and/or one of the five-person talkfests like Outnumbered.
And is ABC's The View just a reason to start drinking earlier in the day?

Of course they do! People are innately lazy, and easily lead. How else could Donald Trump be running for president?

"This, then, is the paradox of echo chambers: Few of us live in them, but those who do exercise disproportionate influence"

In the case of religion in the USA the echo chamber & the participants amount to almost half the adult population. eg. 46% Americans Believe In Creationism According To Latest Gallup Poll http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism

Forty six percent Americans believed in creationism, 32 percent believed in theistic evolution and 15 percent believed in evolution without any divine intervention. The data shows that the percent of Americans who believe in creationism has increased slightly by 2 percent over the last 30 years. The percent of Americans who believe in evolution has also increased by 6 percent over the last 30 years while the percent of Americans who believe in theistic evolution has decreased by 6 percent over the same time period.

Most educated people today see the natural world through the lens of science rather than the Bible. That shift in perspective is largely complete outside the United States,
A recent Gallup poll indicated that more than 100 million Americans are not ready to abandon the biblical understanding of the natural world, insisting that the Earth is but a few thousand years old and that humans were created in their present forms.

Good (not perfect) article and I wish this was the stuff of front page coverage!

My daily intake was usually CNN, Al Jazeera, Financial Times (London), NYT, Los Angeles Times, a local newspaper, and bits and pieces that I am exposed to.

From what I am exposed to, I believe 50% and from there I hypothesize what Could be the truth. After that I remain open for "new data" that could augment or shift my theory of The Truth.

I do this everyday and it's exhausting............

:-)

Most Americans get their news from mainstream news sources. Great! In other words, they get their news from about 6 major corporations who control the majority of news sources.

I over indulge, granted. But I view Huffington and Daily KOS as opinion outlets, and see Public Broadcasting as a source of decent broadcast news. I have been a NYTimes reader since about 1965 - - but now find that reading articles online tends to skew my choices toward "what I want to read" whereas reading a paper paper tends to lead to wider scanning. Thesis: online viewing literally narrows the point of view - which leads to philosophical narrowing ( this begs for a study).

Years back, before cable, when satellite feeds were not even scrambled, my father preferred to get broadcast news from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation... less entertaining, more straight reportage, more attention to the world at large. But he wasn't typical either.

Most people hear /see the highlights.And partisans do grab on to the messages which pick up their own fears and suspicions and echo them, "validating" and cementing what mayhave been tentative positions to start with.

What a surprise. Ever heard of cognitive dissonance? What is the business model of Fox News, Breitbart and the whole conservative political infotainment industry? This is a gold mine Murdoch and smaller fry like Coulter and Limbaugh identified 25 years ago.

Problem with this is that the news consumers are asked to rate the sites they visit in terms of political position. So they will overestimate the "neutrality" of their favourite sources, making both seem more centrally located.

Secondly, Republicans are more likely to rate any number of news sources as more to the left than are Democrats, simply because more of the sources are left-leaning.

Thirdly, when I look at the distributions, I don't just see the Republicans' right skew, I also see a wider Democratic distribution tending left.

" In the absence of a major story like the Clinton email controversy, "

The Clinton email controversy is entirely manufactured by the media. As far as we know, Hillary Clinton's use of her own email server had zero impact on anyone. At the same time, the contents of the "secure" government servers were being published all over the world on Wikileaks.

The same is true of the "ideological" divide. It is largely manufactured by the media to help define niche markets for advertisers. It has nothing to do with any abstract ideology, it is based on which media market people fit into. The media tailor their news to fit that target audience, not the other way around. That's what editors are for.

I belong to this "relatively small group of people who engage in very heavy consumption", but I don't think I live in an echo chamber.

I try to cover the entire political spectrum, from Daily Kos to Breitbart, though the best coverage often comes from foreign outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Sueddeutsche, RT, Le Monde or El Pais depending on the subject.
The NYTimes is still by far the best in the U.S., teven if I oftentimes disagree with their points of view like Iraq WMDs or their endorsement of a horrific candidate like Hillary Clinton.

Seems to me that the problem is not that "politicians and media outlets therefore tend not only to cater to this highly unrepresentative subset of Americans, but also to draw faulty inferences from them about the public’s preferences", but rather that they cater to the average, intellectually lazy American, who - like Trump - can barely grasp the concept within a 140 character Tweet, much less the complexities of political maneuvering, be it foreign or domestic issues.

We'd all be better served if more Americans were politically engaged and intellectually curious about governance instead of wasting their brain's potential on the Kardashians, Kanye West, Gawker, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, or other trivial, inconsequential hogwash.

That in turn would force media outlets to cater to a better informed citizenry, making the current state of abysmal, partisan, lazy journalism much less likely, ultimately bringing us better candidates.

Donald examined Hillary Clinton's 30 years in public service.

Donald Trump tweaked Secretary Clinton for voting to give President George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq if the case were made that Hussein possessed WMD that threatened the country in the aftermath of 9/11.

Donald criticized Secretary Clinton for preventing a massacre in Libya with an international coalition.

Secretary Clinton did not review Donald Trump's 30 year career in business.

It wasn't the forum.

So lets:

Donald took out tens of millions in salary and bonuses from his only public company that failed, losing investors and creditors hundreds of millions of dollars.

Donald has bankrupted 4 companies, more than any person in modern history.

Donald is being sued for fraud for running an unlicensed for-profit diploma mill that encouraged students to max out their credit cards to pay tuition.

Donald made large contributions to the attorney generals and judges hearing his fraud case to avoid trial from state to state.

He bragged during the Republican debates that he always got something for the money he spread around to elected and appointed officials.

He has run through 3 campaign managers, relying on nepotism to run a national campaign for President, and spending political contributions from supporters at his businesses for personal gain.

He admires dictators and Russia is helping his campaign.

I guess that will be covered in the next debate.

Trust and Distrust: Liberals Trust Many, Conservatives Trust Few

Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:

Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.

Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.

Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.

Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.

By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:

Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less.

Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS, and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.

Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or “defriend” someone on a social network – as well as to end a personal friendship – because of politics.

Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds.

I read the NY Times, the Washington Post, Canadian (CBC, Globe and Mail, National Post), UK (Guardian and others), and various European and Australian news sites. I rarely go to CNN, MSN or Fox unless it's for breaking U.S. news I can't find elsewhere. On occasion I'll read sites on the left and right ends of the spectrum listed here.

As a centrist (though which of us doesn't view himself or herself as the sensible moderate?) I am struck by the difference in tone and character between the left and right sides of the news sites.

While the left-leaning ones often show a stereotypical woollyheadedness and impracticality as well as a reliance on questionable sources (e.g. where GMOs are concerned), it rarely draws more than a rueful eye-roll. The sites on the right, though, are marked by an undercurrent of anger, contempt, and bigotry, as well as a reckless disregard for facts, often recycling long-debunked claims. Judging from comment forums, their readers lap this up eagerly. This isn't limited to a few topics, but covers a wide range of issues from U.S. politics to international immigration/refugee crises to climate change.

Watching the current election from north of the border, I'm concerned that its results may be influenced by the polarization and tactics of the extreme right, and in a way deeply detrimental to American democracy. I really hope you can sort things out.

Does this data do anything to persuade the Times' editorial board that it might, in fact, be perceived as leftish by most people? Try not to lose sleep over it.

This sounds like a modified form of the so-called two-step flow.

The central flaw here is the classification of news sites. AOL and MSN aren't "neutral." They are Liberal/Progressive. The Progressive lock on the media narrative is nearly complete, and aggregator sites like AOL simply push forward stories from the Liberal news providers, e.g. the NY Times, AP, Reuters, etc. When AOL starts posting articles from Unz.com then we can talk about it being "neutral."

Similarly, it's laughable to call Fox "right wing." It is at best a tepid purveyor of Republican establishment thought, which is identical to Democrats on everything important but veers off on some social issues of minor significance. No major media outlets are opposed to the globalist agenda: invade the world, invite the world. The Democrats take the lead on this. The Republicans are merely the controlled fake opposition.

That's why Trump has everyone in the power structure so angry. He's the only one questioning ANY of it.

I would posit that this data echoes the demographics of viewership as well as website visitation. For Republicans, the cluster around Fox News is appropriate and the demographics are probably the same as Fox News (old and white) while the Democrats are more diffuse in their visits. Without any cross tabulation in either the article or the actual paper, it is hard to know. However, there are some problems. In my deeply red state, there are large pockets with little or no internet access and of those with internet, the research shows the older generation does not use the internet much at all. If one goes to any public or private place, any television is turned to Fox News channel if it is not on sports. I cannot recall seeing anything but Fox News (even in the airport) for many years. Website visits may be a good proxy, but not for some parts of the US.