Member-only story
New research: Polarization in news production
Recently, a paper I worked on with Johannes Wachs and Emőke-Ágnes Horvát was published in New Media & Society. We looked at political polarization in news production, by tracking how freelancers and other writers move from outlet to outlet over time. This paper complements work done on polarized news consumption, showing how integrated political leaning is throughout the digital media sphere. Key findings are summarized below, and you can read the whole paper here.
1. Writers move along political lines
Overwhelmingly, news contributors of all kinds stick to one side of the aisle when moving between outlets. There are very few cases of crossover, meaning political leaning largely governs which outlets writers contribute to. One big difference between the left and right leaning clusters is structure — connections between right leaning outlets are extremely dense. This means movement among all right leaning outlets is extremely common, while some paths through the left leaning cluster are weak or nonexistent.
2. Topics vary by political leaning
These movement patterns also impact the kinds of news that audiences see. Writers in these clusters focus on distinct topics — the left leaning cluster focuses more on the media and the press, for example…
