Abstract

There is a growing concern regarding political polarization in the United States, most notably the phenomenon of affective polarization, which is when polarization increases negative feelings toward those who differ politically. The current dissertation project sought to address this issue by testing a media intervention using podcasts. Podcasts allow speakers to talk for hours uninterrupted through long-form discussions, whereas other media often edit political discussions to the point of contextomy (editing and framing a quote out of its proper context). Podcasts were created for this dissertation which differed on the political message of the podcast guest (conservative vs. liberal), and whether contextomy was used to edit the guest's words into an extreme political message (unedited vs. edited podcast). Across two studies, using an online MTurk sample (N = 422) and a university student sample (N = 285), I found a pattern of increased indirect verbal aggression expressed toward the podcast guest if they held politically incongruent views. The reductive effect of long-form unedited podcasts on verbal aggression was found to be marginally significant (p = .058) in study one but significant (p = .011) in study two. Together, these suggest that long-form discussions, like the ones found on podcasts, are better at presenting differing political opinions without exacerbating affective polarization, and consequently, evidence that the use of contextomy makes affective polarization worse.

Degree

PhD

College and Department

Family, Home, and Social Sciences; Psychology

Rights

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