Partisan selective exposure and politically polarized attitudes toward disruptive protest

Abstract

While many Americans support the right to protest, increased animus has recently been directed at protesters themselves, often along partisan ideological lines and in partisan media content. However, there is a lack of research on attitudes toward treatment of protesters in the context of political violence and selective exposure to likeminded partisan sources of information. This study finds that a significant, positive relationship exists between self-identified Republicans and thinking that disruptive protesters deserve to be “roughed up,” while identifying as a Democrat produced a negative relationship in the same circumstance. Likewise, consumption of conservative partisan media was found to have a positive relationship with the idea of “roughing up” disruptive protesters, while liberal partisan media was found to have a negative relationship. However, selective exposure to attitude-affirming media only had a significant impact among self-identified Democrats, in the sense that Democrats’ selective exposure to left-leaning media was associated with less support for “roughing up” disruptive protesters.