The Republican and Democratic parties in the United States naturally have a number of differences, and as time has gone by the parties seem to be getting further and further away from being able to reach a common ground. Party polarization is defined as the vast and growing gap between liberals and conservatives. (Pew Research Center) There are many reasons as to why the public specifically are having trouble agreeing, such as the media’s different portrayals of same events, the social media’s ability to drive polarization, and viewpoints on the core issues becoming stronger. The average citizen, traditionally, knows which news outlet they should listen to in order to get their news catered to what their beliefs are. Conservative often times
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This should not be shocking considering President Donald Trump uses Twitter as a means of communicating with not only his followers, but the world. For years, social media has been a good tool for different candidates to communicate with citizens and inherently will lead to conversations between people who don’t always agree. These arguments can get hostile very quick, because everyone has their own opinion and doesn’t want to be wrong. All of these thing work together to separate the party lines. “This condition is unlikely to change, Steven Strauss, a 2012 advanced leadership fellow at Harvard, writes in The Huffington Post. Americans “believe what we want to believe, and we selectively filter out information contradicting our preferences.” This is what experts call “confirmation bias,” which was less troublesome in the 1960s, he says, when Americans “got their news from one of three TV networks and local newspapers were often a monopoly.” Social media could “possibly entrench our ideologies even deeper,” Capaldi says. “We tend to congregate in social media and create an environment that is fortified by opinion and thought that pushes us further into our positions.” This statement making you understand that social media is great for many things but is so often a place of negativity that continues to divide the two parties. During election periods especially, it seems as though every time you get on Facebook you see someone you have known your entire life arguing with someone else as to why their candidate is the best option. The resolution to this issue is pretty unclear on how to find a way to decentralize social media as a platform for political discussions. When observing the core issues in politics, the majority of society is either moving to the extreme left or moving to the extreme right on issues, such as, gay marriage, abortion, global
This should not be shocking considering President Donald Trump uses Twitter as a means of communicating with not only his followers, but the world. For years, social media has been a good tool for different candidates to communicate with citizens and inherently will lead to conversations between people who don’t always agree. These arguments can get hostile very quick, because everyone has their own opinion and doesn’t want to be wrong. All of these thing work together to separate the party lines. “This condition is unlikely to change, Steven Strauss, a 2012 advanced leadership fellow at Harvard, writes in The Huffington Post. Americans “believe what we want to believe, and we selectively filter out information contradicting our preferences.” This is what experts call “confirmation bias,” which was less troublesome in the 1960s, he says, when Americans “got their news from one of three TV networks and local newspapers were often a monopoly.” Social media could “possibly entrench our ideologies even deeper,” Capaldi says. “We tend to congregate in social media and create an environment that is fortified by opinion and thought that pushes us further into our positions.” This statement making you understand that social media is great for many things but is so often a place of negativity that continues to divide the two parties. During election periods especially, it seems as though every time you get on Facebook you see someone you have known your entire life arguing with someone else as to why their candidate is the best option. The resolution to this issue is pretty unclear on how to find a way to decentralize social media as a platform for political discussions. When observing the core issues in politics, the majority of society is either moving to the extreme left or moving to the extreme right on issues, such as, gay marriage, abortion, global