Abstract
Aptly titled, How Partisan Media Polarize America by Dr. Matthew Levendusky addresses how partisan media polarize voters, decrease beliefs in bipartisanship and compromise, shape electoral engagement, and generate impact regardless of attracting a relatively small audience (p. 135). The mark of any good teacher is an ability to outline a topic of discussion, offer instruction on that topic, and then provide an overview of the material just covered in a lesson. In the spirit of quality education, Levendusky does a fine job spelling out his points of interest, detailing his evidence to support various claims, and offering a summary assessment of the major themes covered in the book. Readers of this work will gain a general understanding of why partisan media can shape basic democratic processes and outcomes.
I would argue the intended audience for this work is not experienced academic researchers who are devoted to the study of political media influence. The style of the work is best suited for a broader public or academics new to the field of political communication. It is clear Levendusky does not wish to burden the reader with overly expansive methodological details or analytical minutiae, and this approach is perfectly fine if the desire is to reach a broader audience. The results are offered in a manner that allows those individuals without a sufficient analytical acumen to gain quality insights. Individuals who wish to comb through the more refined elements of high-quality academic research should turn to Levendusky’s published works in peer-review journals.
From the standpoint of a theoretical foundation, it is always worthwhile to identify the explanatory principles that undergird a researcher’s framework. As articulated by Levendusky, two of the primary explanatory principles driving the empirical study of political media influence are understanding and consistency. With his grounding of How Partisan Media Polarize America in motivated reasoning (p. 21), Levendusky has placed his work clearly in the consistency camp. This approach treats human beings as creatures who desire to see the world as they wish it to be (or how they envision the world already), rather than wanting to see the world as it actually is (i.e., understanding). Taking a consistency-based approach places Levendusky in good standing within the field given the return of this explanatory principle as dominant within political communication (see Holbert et al. 2013). However, it is important to compare and contrast consistency-oriented findings with those generated from alternative explanatory principles (e.g., understanding). Given the importance of this topic, the field needs to generate a wealth of knowledge derived from varied research agendas reflecting different assumptions concerning what is driving citizens to consume partisan media.
The work is diverse in method, with Levendusky using a combination of content analysis, experimentation, and national survey data. The strongest work can be found in the experimentation. Levendusky includes the use of some advanced techniques (e.g., addressing of preference effect, p. 80) and moves beyond the measurement of immediate post-exposure assessments to look at longer-term influences (i.e., forty-eight hours). Levendusky does a solid job of discussing the strengths and weaknesses of forced exposure versus introducing choice into experimental designs. He rightfully points out that each type of experimental design generates its own form of knowledge. In line with this insight, I would encourage the International Journal of Press/Politics (IJPP) audience to take a look at some recent work by Feldman et al. (2013) addressing advanced techniques for studying partisan selective exposure experimentally. The weakest of Levendusky’s offerings can be found in the content analysis. There is no clear sense of the establishment of intercoder reliability and the use of case studies is a poor substitute for more generalizable findings. The survey-based work is a secondary analysis of 2008 National Annenberg Election Study (NAES) data that is most ably performed. It is in the presentation of the survey-based methodology that Levendusky steps furthest away from appealing to a more general audience with the offering of formal equations and use of language like “stochastic disturbance term” (p. 117). Overall, the mark of a solid bit of systematic scholarship is the use of multiple methods and Levendusky employs all of the fundamental tools utilized in the social scientific study of political media influence.
Since IJPP is listed dually as a Communication and Political Science outlet, it is important to have a sense of how representative How Partisan Media Polarize America is of each field. There is a wealth of communication scholars and political scientists taking on the social scientific study of political media influence, but each field retains its own sets of questions and regard different types of knowledge as primary versus secondary versus tertiary. One means by which we can assess where a particular work falls on the communication versus political science continuum is to look at its reference section. I conducted a quick content analysis of this section of the book (single coder only), assigning each work to a discipline-specific category (I also included an “other” category for general methods, the popular press, and any works from disciplines that did not represent at least 10 percent of all references). I wish to also note that several of the outlets defined as “communication” for this exercise are, like IJPP, listed dually as communication and political science (e.g., Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Communication). With these details in mind, the Levendusky reference (N = 304) breakdown is as follows: Political Science (N = 139, 45.7 percent), communication (N = 49, 16.1 percent), and psychology (N = 36, 11.8 percent)—the “other” category ended up comprising the remaining 26.4 percent (N = 80). So, there is a decided political science bent to the work as a whole, perfectly appropriate and understandable given this is the field within which Levendusky is housed. Nevertheless, the IJPP readership should know where this work falls along the communication-political science continuum.
Every book review should include a summary of what the reviewer would like to have seen addressed in a work. For this reviewer, I think it is important to look at the role and influence of partisan media alongside traditional, non-partisan, mainstream media. Yes, there is the FOX News audience and the MSNBC audience, and there is some overlap between these two communities. However, the one place where both the FOX News and MSNBC audiences meet most frequently is with the nightly TV news broadcast. As stated by Garrett (2013), “a large and stable majority of Americans maintain a diverse news diet, relying heavily on less partisan mainstream media and consuming smaller amounts of both pro- and counter-attitudinal partisan sources” (p. 248). It will be important to assess the complementary relationships formed between these diverse outlets to continue to advance our understanding of the role of partisan media within a democracy. In addition, there needs to be an acknowledgment that the consumption of bipartisan political media can produce a similar set of effects as presented by Levendusky, and these effects are due to the same set of consistency-oriented cognitive processes (e.g., motivated reasoning, reducing cognitive dissonance, biased processing) dominating the study of partisan media. For example, it has been shown that the consumption of non-partisan political media events like a presidential debate can lead citizens to question the legitimacy of election outcomes due to a desire to reduce cognitive dissonance (Holbert et al. 2009). There is a need to step back and reflect on the degree to which partisan media are producing truly unique effects relative to the ways in which people are consuming non-partisan media. Both of the points raised in this paragraph speak to the need to look at how partisan and non-partisan political media work in coordination with one another to affect democratic processes and outcomes.
Overall, Levendusky’s How Partisan Media Polarize America is a quick and valuable read, especially for those individuals new to the study of political media influence. The book is a reflection of the field’s current proclivities with its embracing a consistency-center approach to assessing partisan media influence. Levendusky has built a strong reputation as a solid researcher and How Partisan Media Polarize America will only add to his audience as he continues to promote insights on the potentially damaging effects of partisan media in the post-broadcast age.