AMERICAN politics has perhaps never been quite so divisive. Bipartisanship in Congress is almost non-existent. The two major parties are cleaving on racial lines. Republicans are increasingly the party of whites, with Donald Trump showing a 20 point margin over Hillary Clinton. And black people favour Mrs Clinton by 80 points.
What is to blame for this state of affairs? Perhaps it is failing social cohesion of the kind bemoaned in “Bowling Alone”, an influential book by American sociologist Robert Putnam. Or perhaps the birth of new media, fuelled by the internet, which now permits a person to choose the facts to match his or her opinions, and not vice versa.
To test the latter thesis, The Economist asked voters to rate the trustworthiness of eight outlets, and compared those ratings to their vote intention in the presidential election. Using a standard statistical technique known as principal-components analysis, we identified the two strongest patterns in voter trust in the media.
The first dimension was voters’ appraisal of the trustworthiness for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, CNN and...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2eGAnTE
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