Kevin Arceneaux of Temple University and Martin Johnson of the University of California-Riverside published a book called Changing Minds or Changing Channels? In the book they conducted an experiment of about 1,700 participants to see if certain TV shows polarize people’s beliefs. They split the participants into different groups. One group would be forced to watch Fox News (conservative), one would watch MSNBC (liberal), and others were given a choice to watch one out of four TV channels. The other TV channels were entertainment options that had similar ratings, like something along the lines of Dirty Jobs. The results were pretty telling. Those who were given the option to choose or to “channel surf” watched more of the entertainment options than the news channels. Another study actually found that more Americans are turning to the Internet for their news and watching TV solely for entertainment purposes.
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The people who classified themselves as “entertainment seekers” who were forced to watch the news channels actually changed their political beliefs. However, the problem here is that they were forced to watch the news channels. If they were left with a choice (which all of us have), they probably would not have chosen to watch those news shows. They most likely do not have much political knowledge, so whatever side they hear, they will likely just believe it because it seems credible enough. Once they gain more political knowledge though, they will most likely change their beliefs to whichever they truly believe in. Practically speaking, cable news shows do not polarize the population, but they instead draw viewers who share the same belief. It is a place where people can be comfortable watching and trusting people that they share beliefs with instead of a tool to convince people of their opinions.
On the other side, those who classified themselves as “news seekers” did not change their opinions that much. In fact, Arceneaux and Johnson conducted another study of conservative viewers watching more liberal shows and the liberal viewers watching more conservative shows. Instead of softening their beliefs or making them see the other side more clearly, it actually strengthened both sides’ original beliefs since what they saw did not match their own opinions. They saw things that contradicted with their beliefs, so they fell back to their own beliefs which of course seem much more right to them.
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Another study was done where it was found that people actually flip between CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC to find their news. People are much more open in their opinions than most people may think, but the problem lies when those channels are too biased and deter people from believing what they hear. The real problem with cable news is that instead of providing reliable, unbiased news broadcasts, they tend to focus on a particular audience. They waste time on trying to please people that they report on the real stuff much less. They are not educating America, but they are neither polarizing it. They are simply just TV channels that some people choose to watch and others don’t.
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The significance of the cable news shows is also exaggerated. During a week when Fox’s Bill O’Reilly drew about 3.4 million viewers, CBS Evening News alone drew about 10.2 million. More people are watching the standard evening news programs than the biased cable network ones, so as a whole TV channels are not to blame for the recent polarization of politics. Rather, the polarization comes directly from Congress itself. The representatives have become much more hardened in their beliefs and their own agenda. Many of the politicians serve to help interest groups who provided the funding they needed to be elected into office. It is a broken political system driven by money, but there is not much we can do about it.
Sources:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/10/are-partisan-news-sources-polarizing-americans/
http://www.journalism.org/2013/10/11/how-americans-get-tv-news-at-home/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/02/03/are-fox-and-msnbc-polarizing-america/