Levendusky: The Effects Of Partisan Media

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Levendusky continues his work by extending his study to the effects partisan media has on its viewers. He proposes a total of sixteen hypotheses, each a component to answer one of three questions: do partisan media affect the polarization of attitudes held by viewers, do they “decrease willingness to support bipartisanship and compromise”, and do they mold how a viewer interprets, understands, and behaves in elections (Levendusky 65)? Generally, Levendusky hypothesized that individuals will polarize attitudes when consuming partisan media that both agree (also known as “like-minded media”) and disagree (also known as “crosscutting” media) with their previously held ideologies. When exposed to crosscutting media, the attitudes of viewers may …show more content…
Individuals who consume partisan media will generally trust and hold their own party more favorably while simultaneously distrusting and holding the opposition less favorably, although the reciprocal may be true if the individual consumes crosscutting media that he or she deems credible. As a result, partisan media decreases support for bipartisan solutions and policy created by opposition parties. In election cycles, partisan media can have the potential to swing results by swaying voters to support for their party’s respective nominee. Not only can partisan media affect the outcome itself, but can also affect the lense of which the voter uses to process the outcome of the election. Although partisan media can only claim a small percentage of the population as a part of its viewer base, it remains highly influential to the greater population because of the high political efficacy, agency, and power of the individuals of that small …show more content…
Hannity and Maddow took radically different methods of covering the same story. Hannity was much brasher and more aggressive in his approach and placed much more emphasis on what the indictment documents did not contain rather than what it did contain. The indictments did not contain mention of American cooperation in the operation which Hannity then extrapolates into the complete vindication of Trump and his campaign from the accusation of collusion in the 2016 presidential campaign. Hannity goes further to shift the blame on Hillary Clinton, former President Obama, the DNC, and the “left media” (Hannity) for lying to the American public, failing to prevent Russian intervention, and in general being incompetent in protecting American interests. Hannity also places special attention onto the Uranium One controversy, which portrays Hillary Clinton and her supporters as manipulative and corrupt to his viewers, and connects her to malevolent foreign intervention. As Levendusky predicted, Hannity made an extreme effort to place the blame of Russian intervention and the shortcoming of national intelligence on the opposition
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