Browsing by Subject "Political scandal"

American political culture has become increasingly polarized from the 1970s onwards. Among the many factors that have contributed to the rise of behavioral polarization between Democrats and Republicans is the emergence of partisan media. In this thesis, I compare the coverage of American liberal and conservative media of two political #MeToo scandals in the autumn of 2017: those of Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Al Franken. I conduct a quantitative and qualitative frame analysis of online media articles by CNN, Fox News, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal from the first three days of each scandal. I find that liberal and conservative media differ in their coverage of the two events. First, they show differences in how they frame sexual harassment scandals. Second, the partisan leanings of the politicians seem to affect framing decisions and the volume of reporting. My findings are in line with recent research on behavioral polarization, and how partisan strength and disdain towards the opposing party may rise within a nation. Since partisan media tend to skew news topics to be more favorable to their own political leaning, people who subscribe to liberal outlets may form a very different understanding of political issues compared to those who follow conservative media.