Publishing patterns reflect political polarization in news media

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the network of contributors to digital news outlets reflects and reinforces political polarization, affecting news topics, style, and cross-partisan engagement.

Contribution

It reveals the structural influence of contributor networks on media polarization, highlighting production-side factors independent of individual organizational priorities.

Findings

Contributor networks align with outlet political leanings

Polarized clusters differ in news topics and tone

Cross-partisan contributors focus on less political topics

Abstract

Digital news outlets rely on a variety of outside contributors, from freelance journalists, to political commentators, to executives and politicians. These external dependencies create a network among news outlets, traced along the contributors they share. Using connections between outlets, we demonstrate how contributors' publishing trajectories tend to align with outlet political leanings. We also show how polarized clustering of outlets translates to differences in the topics of news covered and the style and tone of articles published. In addition, we demonstrate how contributors who cross partisan divides tend to focus on less explicitly political topics. This work addresses an important gap in the media polarization literature, by highlighting how structural factors on the production side of news media create an ecosystem shaped by political leanings, independent of the priorities of any one person or organization.