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The media, through its primary role in communication, has always been at the heart of American society. Technological advancements in the recent past have changed how people consume information, increasing the accessibility to the media. One of the aspects of American society that has been impacted by the more accessible media is American politics. The media is now more visible in the political scene. For instance, according to a research by the Pew Research Center on the primary source of political information in the 2016 American Presidential elections, researchers found that 24% of the Americans that learned about the elections did so from cable news, 14% from local TV, 14% from social media, 13% from news websites/apps and 10% from network nightly news (Mitchell et al., 2016). In contrast, only 1% of the American voters relied on the candidate’s or campaign website (Mitchell et al., 2016). Therefore, the different streams of media are the primary source of information in the American political scene.

The primacy of the media as a source of political information comes with a range of both positive and negative impacts. This study examines the role that the media plays in American politics by asking the question; what is the utility of the media in American politics? This research shows that the media has significant positive and negative effects on the political discourse, political reputation, and political participation, but the opportunities for benefits seem to be outweighed by the potential for harm. While the media enriches the political discourse through fact-checking, builds a political reputation by connecting the politicians to their constituents and energizes democracy by stimulating political participation, it also has a polarizing effect on the political discourse, can be used for character assassination through fake news, and robs its users of the time they would have used to participate in the political process.

Literature Review

Effect of the media on political discourse

Scholars studying the role of the media in politics are divided about the value that the media brings to the political discourse in American politics. On one side, there are those that claim that the media has the overall effect of enriching the political discourse in American politics. One of the dominant views among scholars that subscribe to this position is that the media acts as a referee for the participants in the political discourse (including other media outlets) and keeps them accountable. In “The Effect of Fact-Checking on Elites: A Field Experiment on U.S. State Legislators,” Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler (2015) argue that the political discourse in a democratic society is enriched by the fact-checking practice of the media outlets. In a nutshell, fact-checking is the practice by media outlets to evaluate the claims made by politicians and political elites in different forums as part of the political discourse (Nyhan & Reifler, 2015). Fact-checking dispenses public judgment about the correctness of the assertions and political claims made in the political discourse. According to Nyhan and Reifler (2015), the utility of fact-checking by the media outlets is that the politicians are very sensitive to the media scrutiny and they avoid making factually misleading statements. Consequently, fact-checking by the media enriches the political discourse because it has “significant consequences for political accountability and democratic discourse” (Nyhan & Reifler, 2015).

On the other side, some scholars feel that the overall effect of the media on political discourse is a negative one. One dominant view among such scholars is that the media is aligned along partisan lines, such that the coverage of political issues is highly polarizing to the audience. In “New Media and the Polarization of American Political Discourse,” Matthew Baum and Tim Groeling (2008) posit that the media has a polarizing effect on the American political discourse. According to Baum and Groeling (2008), media outlets play the gatekeeper role when they decide on what information to disseminate to their audience. The assumed gatekeeper role by the media outlets is best demonstrated by the comments of the managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2017 who claimed “I understand that people have a hard time with the concept that we get to decide what is news and what isn’t, and what is fair and what isn’t” (Baum & Groeling, 2008). In their execution of the assumed gatekeeper role, the media outlets align themselves along partisan lines resulting in what Baum and Groeling call “partisan filtering” (2008). Baum and Groeling (2008) conclude that liberal media outlets are more likely to feature stories damaging to Republicans and helpful to Democrats. Similarly, the conservative media outlets are aligned with the Republicans; thus they will be more inclined to publish stories that are injurious to the Democrats (Baum & Groeling, 2008). The effect of this partisan filtering is that it polarizes the voters, thus diluting the political discourse from an issue-based conversation to pure partisan sycophancy. The voters are denied the change to be exposed to a wide range of views; hence their grasp of the political atmosphere is limited.

Closely related to partisan filtering is the phenomenon of echo chambers. In agreement with Baum and Groeling (2008), Kiran Garimella, Aristides Gionis, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales and Michael Mathioudakis in “Discourse on Social Media: Echo Chambers, Gatekeepers, and the Price of Bipartisanship” blame the media for polarizing the voters through their political echo chambers (2018). A political echo chamber is a state of affairs where an individual is only exposed to ideas that agree with their own. According to Garimella et al. (2018), the media (including the social media) polarizes the public along political lines because the political filtering denies the voters the chance to hear arguments of the opposite side. While the social media was seen by many as an antidote to the partisan filtering in the conventional media outlets, algorithmic filtering and personalization on social media have reinforced the phenomenon of echo chamber through selective exposure of the audience to the ideas that confirm their beliefs (Garimella et al., 2018). The result of echo chambers on the political discourse is that they “hamper the deliberative process in democracy” (Garimella et al., 2018). Therefore, Garimella et al. (2018) and (Baum & Groeling, 2008) agree that the media dilutes the political discourse through partisan filtering or algorithmic filtering which prevents the audience from being exposed to ideas that are different from their own.

Effect of the media on political reputation

In the American political sphere, the media has always been integral in shaping the perceptions about political parties and politicians. As a result, it has always been one of the best tools for building up the reputation of the politicians aspiring to join public office. In political campaigns, it is not feasible for politicians to physically reach out to every constituent. The media satisfies the need for the politicians and the political parties to establish contact with the voters by serving as the platform where politicians, government and political parties can advertise themselves. As Riezebos et al. (2011) point out, the favorable perception that got popular candidates like John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama elected was thanks to the auspicious reputation that the media perpetuated about these candidates. According to Shannon C. McGregor (2017), building a reputation of a politician through the media is a great way to get elected because the American political system is highly personalized, with voters relying on what they see on the media to form their opinions about politicians or politics in general. McGregor (2017) argues that politicians that are more visible in the media have higher evaluations of parasocial interactions; thus the constituents feel like they can personally relate to the politician. Therefore, this level of identification by the constituents with their politicians or representatives would not have been possible if the media did not have the agency of polishing the reputation of these politicians.

As much as the media can be lauded for the increased visibility of some political contestants and politicians, it has also served as a potent weapon against the reputation of other politicians. One of the most consequential media phenomena that affect the reputation of politicians is “fake news.” In “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election,” Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow (2017) describe fake news as “news articles that are intentionally and verifiably false, and could mislead readers” (p. 213). The political implications of fake news are far-reaching. According to Allcott and Gentzkow (2017), the 2016 presidential elections were marred by misinformation and character assassination through fake news. The target of most of the fake news articles was the Democrat presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. According to Allcott and Gentzkow (2017), the fake news articles shared in the 2016 US presidential elections were predominantly anti-Clinton. The authors speculate that Clinton’s loss in the 2016 US presidential elections can be partly attributed to the damage that the misleading fake news had on her reputation.

Just like Allcott and Gentzkow (2017), other scholars in recent political literature have speculated that one of the reasons Hillary Clinton lost the elections to Donald Trump, who most commentators predicted would lose the elections, was because of the negative image of Hillary Clinton that was disseminated by the media at the time through fake news. Paul Mihailidis and Samantha Viotty (2018), in “Spreadable Spectacle in Digital Culture: Civic Expression, Fake News, and the Role of Media Literacies in Post-Fact’ Society,” agrees with Alcott and Gentzkow (2017) that the fake news phenomenon is damaging to the reputation of the politicians. In essence, fake news articles are malicious because they are designed to misinform. For instance, Mihailidis and Viotty (2017) document a case where a fake news article had accused Hillary Clinton of running a child abuse ring from a Pizzeria in Washington DC. This fake news scandal is known as Pizzagate, and it culminated in one voter, Edgar Welch, arming himself with a handgun and a rifle to go to the pizzeria to free the children that Clinton had allegedly held captive at the establishment (Mihailidis & Viotty, 2017). According to Mihailidis and Viotty (2017), this character assassination mission was an elaborate media campaign to spread misinformation, and by trying to debunk the fake news spreading about Hillary Clinton in Pizzagate, the media legitimized the fake narrative. Operatives within Trump’s campaign also legitimized the Pizzagate fake news by sharing misinformation on social media (Mihailidis & Viotty, 2017). At the end of the Pizzagate campaign, the reputation of Hillary Clinton within the political sphere was heavily compromised by the negative coverage through different media streams of information. Therefore, while social media can be a tool for building a reputable image for the politicians, recent events show that it can equally be applied for character assassination.

Effect of the media on political participation

Civic participation is one of the pillars that democracy is founded on, and it is what distinguishes a democracy from a dictatorship. The primacy of the different streams of media as a source of political information is thus bound to have an impact on how citizens participate in the democratic political system like the American one. Scholars studying how the proliferation of media, especially social media platforms, as the primary source of political information interacts with the political system have varied views on its impact. There is a group of scholars that credit the media for increased and diversified participation of the public in the civic affairs. Gil de Zúñiga, Jung and Valenzuela (2012) are of the view that the way people consume digital media is “a positive and significant predictor of people’s social capital and civic and political participatory behaviors, online and offline” (p. 319). One of the findings in the study by Gil de Zúñiga, Jung, & Valenzuela (2012) was that the use of digital media as a source of information had a significant and positive impact on people’s actions directed at civic and political participation.

The role of digital media as a source of political information is fortified by the utility of social media in sharing political information. In a study of how the social media influence political participation, Halpern, Valenzuela, and Katz (2017) concluded that the use of social media as a source of political information was positively related to political participation. According to Halpern, Valenzuela, and Katz, “political sharing of content on social media activates users' sense of personal and collective agency, which boosts their likelihood of political participation” (2017). Therefore, social media energizes democracy by stimulating the propensity of its users to participate in the civic processes. At the same time, research shows that the positive effect of the informational use of media was not unique to digital media. An earlier study by Gil de Zúñiga, Puig-i-Abril and Rojas (2009) established that the traditional informational outlets had positive effects on political engagement. The results of this study built support for the position that the use of media (both digital and traditional) was directly responsible for increased public participation in politics.

The view that the use of the media is positively related to the political participation of the citizens has not always been the dominant position within the scholarly community in political science. In the 1990s and early 2000, several scholars took positions blaming the use of media for the declining levels of civic participation in the United States at the time. Robert D. Putnam refers to the television as the “culprit” responsible for the erosion of the social capital and civic disengagement (1995). Based on Putnam’s (1995) theory of time displacement, when people watch television, it is at the expense of participating in any activity outside their home, including political activities. Putnam (1995) suggests that television privatizes people’s leisure time. Therefore, rather than spending time in social gatherings such as community political activities, people spend more time watching TV.

Similarly, the use of non-traditional media through online platforms has been blamed for stealing away the time that people would otherwise have utilized in political participation activities. When the internet became popular as a way for people to connect and share information, scholars started applying Putnam’s (1995) time displacement to the use of the internet and its effect on social life. Kraut et al. (1998) argued that access to information through the internet would compete with social contact as a way for people to spend their time. This argument was a direct application of Putnam’s (1995) time displacement theory. According to Kraut et al. (1998), the internet “potentially reduces the importance of physical proximity in creating and maintaining networks of strong social ties” (p. 1019). Since strong personal ties are facilitated by physical proximity, Kraut et al. (1998) were of the view that the use of the internet would erode peoples participating in social life, and by extension, reduce political participation.

Conclusion

The existing body of literature documents varied effects of the media as a source of political information to the American political system, specifically, the effect on the political discourse, political reputation, and political participation. Generally, the review of the existing literature suggests that the potential for harm outweighs the opportunities for benefits of the use of the media as a source of information. On the effect of the media on the political discourse, Nyhan and Reifler (2015) argue that media enriches the political discourse through fact-checking. On the other side, Garimella et al. (2018) and (Baum & Groeling, 2008) argue that the media dilutes the political discourse through partisan filtering or algorithmic filtering which prevents the audience from being exposed to ideas that are different from their own. On the effect of the media on the political reputation, Riezebos et al. (2011) and McGregor (2017) laud the media for being instrumental in cultivating a positive reputation for the politicians, a reputation that enables them to connect with their constituents. On the other hand, Allcott and Gentzkow (2017) and Mihailidis and Viotty (2017) illustrate the dark side of the media when it is used for character assassinations through fake news. Finally, on the effect of the media on political participation, Gil de Zúñiga, Jung and Valenzuela (2012), Halpern, Valenzuela and Katz (2017) and Gil de Zúñiga, Puig-i-Abril and Rojas (2009) are of the view that the use of media as a source of political information energizes democracy by stimulating political participation. On the other hand, Putnam’s (1995) and Kraut et al. (1998) dismiss any prospect that the media could positively contribute to political participation, arguing that it robs its users of the time they would have used to participate in the political process, hence eroding political participation.

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References

Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36.

Baum, M. A., & Groeling, T. (2008). New media and the polarization of American political discourse. Political Communication, 25(4), 345-365.

Garimella, K., De Francisci Morales, G., Gionis, A., & Mathioudakis, M. (2018, April). Political Discourse on Social Media: Echo Chambers, Gatekeepers, and the Price of Bipartisanship. In Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference on World Wide Web (pp. 913-922). International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee.

Gil de Zúñiga, H., Jung, N., & Valenzuela, S. (2012). Social media use for news and individuals' social capital, civic engagement and political participation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17(3), 319-336.

Gil de Zúñiga, H., Puig-i-Abril, E., & Rojas, H. (2009). Weblogs, traditional sources online and political participation: An assessment of how the Internet is changing the political environment. New media & society, 11(4), 553-574.

Halpern, D., Valenzuela, S., & Katz, J. E. (2017). We face, I tweet: How different social media influence political participation through collective and internal efficacy. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 22(6), 320-336.

Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S., Mukophadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W. (1998). Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?. American psychologist, 53(9), 1017.

McGregor, S. C. (2018). Personalization, social media, and voting: Effects of candidate self-personalization on vote intention. new media & society, 20(3), 1139-1160.

Mihailidis, P., & Viotty, S. (2017). Spreadable spectacle in digital culture: Civic expression, fake news, and the role of media literacies in “post-fact” society. American Behavioral Scientist, 61(4), 441-454.