Political polarization has been on the rise since the mid-1990s as Republican and Democratic parties drift further apart ideologically. While Americans may believe themselves to be more ideologically polarized than they actually are, there is increased animosity between Democrats and Republicans. In a new paper, co-authors Nicol Turner Lee of Brookings and Eric Forbush, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communications, explore the extent to which community-building is possible on social media platforms, particularly on issues where partisanship has forced many Americans to choose sides on politically charged issues.
This paper, presented at the 2018 TPRC conference in Washington, DC, focuses on the demonstrated trends of partisanship in the net neutrality debate, a regulatory framework that prohibits blocking and unreasonable discrimination by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and promotes greater consumer transparency. The current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repeal of net neutrality rules led to the national Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality on July 12, 2017, one of the largest online campaigns organized around this issue.
Read Full Article »