Don't Blame the Web

Growth of political polarization is largest for groups least likely to use internet.

Political polarization in the United States? Don’t just blame the web, says Brown economics professor Jesse Shapiro.

A popular narrative has developed that online news sources and social media circles create “echo-chambers” of like-minded individuals who paint the opposition as perpetrators of outrages and close off opportunities for conversation.

But Shapiro—along with two colleagues, Levi Boxell and Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford University—showed through data-driven research in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that growth in political polarization is actually largest for the demographic groups in which individuals are least likely to use the Internet and social media.

In addition, their analysis of web use among Republican voters in the 2016 presidential election revealed that Donald trump performed especially well among those least likely to get political information online. that finding, published in the journal PLOS ONE, challenges claims that the web and social media drove the presidential election in favor of Trump.

“These findings don’t prove that online campaign efforts and other aspects of digital media had no impact on the election,” Shapiro said. “But they do pose a challenge for some conventional narratives that put those factors front and center.”

Age was a major predictor of Internet and social media use, according to the research. Some 30 percent of those aged 65 and older used social media in 2016, in contrast to 88 percent of those 18 to 39 years old. Yet Shapiro and his collaborators found that, for seven of eight individual measures, polarization increased more for the older demographic than for younger Americans.

“The main culprits in explaining the rapid rise in polarization probably have to do with forces broader and deeper than the digitization of the news,” Shapiro said.