Graduation Year

2025

Date of Submission

12-2025

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Government

Reader 1

Michael Fortner

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

2024 Colin D Scanlon

Abstract

A common narrative that persists in our current political age is that the American public is more divided than ever before. Survey data and scholarship points to the mass media as being a driving force for increased polarization among Americans. However America has historically been a nation founded on division and partisanship, with a free press working in the backdrop since the founding. So what is it about the modern mass media that contributes to this narrative about record levels of polarization? Scholarship points to four key metrics of polarization to understand the modern media landscape and polarization– partisan rhetoric, sensationalism, misinformation, and perceived polarization. This thesis analyzes how these metrics hold up historically, by measuring them during different periods of media evolution. It then compares those periods to our contemporary age, assessing whether those metrics are what makes our current age of media and polarization fundamentally different from the past. This thesis argues that the metrics which we believe cause unprecedented levels of polarization today, were used consistently since the founding of our nation. Therefore in order to prove the claim today’s age is more polarizing than before, we must consider factors outside of these metrics.

Share

COinS