“On the left side, there’s nothing right. On the right side, there’s nothing left:” polarization of political opinion by news media

Abstract

Political opinions as expressed by the news media have created the phenomenon of polarization in the United States. Modern news agencies have always considered objectivity as being of primary importance. When opinions inadvertently color the facts, the resulting information manipulation can create confusion, and chaos. This study attempts to understand the language differences as expressed by the U.S. news media in the conveyance of political opinions, and to identify predictive language-action cues that can differentiate writing styles of right-wing news media from those of left-wing news media on Twitter. Original tweets from news media agencies were collected and analyzed using logistical regression analysis during September 2019. The study identifies a statistical significance with regards to cognitive loads, analytical thinking, and political sentiment profiles of tweets to allow for better ways of differentiating political opinions between the news media, from right-wing to left-wing. This suggests that news media of the left-wing and right-wing could employ more neutral writing styles to reduce political polarization. The study contributes to our understanding of the language strategies employed by the news media in terms of influencing the public opinions.