From the Senate floor to social media apps to dinner tables across the country, political polarization — the divergence of political attitudes toward ideological extremes — seeps into many aspects of American lives.
Both Republicans and Democrats have experienced this phenomenon to varying extents since the 1980s, with Donald Trump’s highly divisive election in 2016 being a major turning point.
In the past, presidential candidates had relatively high job performance ratings from both sides of the aisle. Over two terms, an average of 49% of Democrats approved of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Similarly, 27% of Republicans approved of Democratic President Bill Clinton’s performance while in office. However, increasing partisanship in the last twenty decades has resulted in low ratings from the opposing party of the presidents in office, with sitting Democratic president Joe Biden scoring a record low of five percent approval from Republicans in 2024. While these statistics represent the most immediately apparent symptom of polarization, it’s far from the only effect.
Within the chaos of the political sphere, media companies are thriving. More than ever before, news outlets tend to lean toward a certain party. For example, MSNBC generally leans left and Fox News leans right.
Physician and former Pennsylvania Congressional candidate Manan Trivedi says partisan information sources have led voters to lean into their inherent confirmation bias, the tendency to seek information in a manner that aligns with one’s existing beliefs and biases.
“The two biggest channels that people watch are pretty much opinion news,” Trivedi said. “It’s an echo chamber.”
Beyond traditional news outlets, independent media companies also profit from polarization. Notably, YouTube videos that challenge people’s political biases are profiting the most, with the most well-known example being the videos produced by Jubilee, a YouTube channel with 9.25 million subscribers.
Jubilee CEO Jason Y. Lee said on the Karat podcast that Jubilee’s mission is to “provoke understanding and create human connection.” While that might have been the original intention, they’ve started to appeal primarily to the growing demand for controversial content. Jubilee and similar media companies pretend to shed light on different political beliefs but instead capitalize on controversy to profit. Independent media companies should not facilitate political discourse to make a profit, as it only spreads misinformation and can warp the formation of political beliefs for younger people.
The power imbalance between the conservative and liberal debaters is clear in all the political content Jubilee makes, but it is most obvious in their series “Surrounded,” where one person debates 20-25 other people with opposing political views. The deliberate wording of the video titles elicits bias even before watching— the term “woke” is often featured in their titles, a buzzword conservatives frequently use to villanize people who are socially aware. The use of the term draws in conservatives who enjoy content belittling anything “woke” while also “rage-baiting” liberals into watching. For example, one video with 24 million views titled “Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative?” implies that the conservative is smarter than all 25 college students, suggesting that the students won’t have the upper hand.
Social studies teacher Andrew Sonnabend stated that exposure to different political perspectives is a double-edged sword.
“I think that the more we get exposed and talk about political differences, the better off we are,” Sonnabend said. “But when it immediately jumps to vilification and name-calling…it makes it very difficult to have those discussions.”
The participants in the debates reflect the power imbalance as well. The video, “Can One Woke Teen Survive 20 Trump Supporters?” featured 19-year-old Dean Withers as the liberal debater. Withers runs daily debate live streams on TikTok for a living. Though he is well-spoken and a very strong debater, Withers has no known background in debate, compared to the several trained and educated politicians, legislators, journalists and debate coaches he was up against. His opponents were also of different age ranges, while the participants in another video, “Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative?” were all young adults. In that video, the central debater is Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and the founder of Turning Point USA, a right-wing nonprofit that raised tens of millions of dollars to run pro-Trump campaigns on college campuses across America.
All of the inequalities in the choice of debaters come to a head in these videos, where participants use personal attacks and interrupt their opponents with little to no moderation from the producers. The lack of moderation leads to heated interactions between debaters, where neither defends an actual argument. Combined with the fact that one side already has the upper hand with sheer numbers, the combative nature of the debate contributes to an “us vs. them” mentality, encouraging viewers to cheer blindly for one team rather than reflect critically on their political beliefs.
These “debates” can influence how younger audiences form political beliefs. Though many factors influence one’s political beliefs, social media plays an increasingly larger role in this process. Around half of TikTok users under 30 use the app to get their news, and while it’s a well-known fact that social media facilitates the spread of misinformation, it’s not always easy to discern.
Junior Harper Stewart says media crafted for polarization introduces viewers to extreme ideologies based on false narratives.
“There’s a lot of misinformation that stems from extremes about a specific political group, which contributes to partisanship,” Stewart said. “It’s not helping younger viewers form critical thinking skills.”
Social media algorithms push high-engagement political content without considering whether or not it is misinformation. When users interact with the content, the algorithm continues to show the user more politically engaged posts. Younger audiences, both of voting age and below, may be influenced by this sort of content, as it is digestible and easy to access. If they already align with a certain set of beliefs, seeing content that reaffirms their beliefs will only make them more set in their ways. Jubilee contributes to this by posting the most heated and controversial parts from its debate videos on its TikTok page. They even made a video encouraging undecided voters in Michigan, a swing state in the 2024 election, to join the debates. As an entertainment channel, it is not Jubilee’s responsibility to encourage undecided voters to change voting habits based on performance in an unbalanced debate.
American political debates have fundamentally changed due to increasing political polarization. Civilized debates are a thing of the past, with the recent presidential debates deteriorating into a cesspool of insults, misinformation and false claims by both candidates, all while televised for millions of Americans to watch. Viewers must hold news outlets accountable and promote healthy, moderated debates between people willing to listen to each other rather than fight tooth and nail. Viewers — and the American public in general— deserve better.
