An "Identity Turn" in political communication?: testing the relationship between media use and identity alignment in the United States.

Despite a rise in identity-centric communication scholarship, there is a lack of theory and evidence regarding how media use relates to the on-going alignment between political and social identities (i.e. identity alignment). We offer a framework for theorizing this dynamic and apply it to examine t...

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Publicado en:Journal of Communication Vol. 76; no. 4; pp. 290 - 303
Autores principales: Lane, Daniel S, Chen, Melody, Wang, Yifei
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Oxford University Press / USA Aug2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Aug2026
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        atl: An "Identity Turn" in political communication?: testing the relationship between media use and identity alignment in the United States.
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          Lane, Daniel S
          Chen, Melody
          Wang, Yifei
        affil: Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
      su:
        United States
        Political communication
        Political affiliation
        Group identity
        Mass media use
      sug:
        subj:
          Political communication
          Political affiliation
          Group identity
          United States
          Political Organizations
          Mass media use
      keyword:
        copyrightHolder:International Communication Association
        copyrightYear:2026
        identity
        inLanguage:en
        media
        polarization
        politics
        publisher:Oxford University Press
        sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf026
        social sorting
        copyrightHolder:International Communication Association
        copyrightYear:2026
        identity
        inLanguage:en
        media
        polarization
        politics
        publisher:Oxford University Press
        sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaf026
        social sorting
      ab: Despite a rise in identity-centric communication scholarship, there is a lack of theory and evidence regarding how media use relates to the on-going alignment between political and social identities (i.e. identity alignment). We offer a framework for theorizing this dynamic and apply it to examine the relationship between Americans' media diets and on-going psychological alignment between political and social identities in the United States (i.e. partisan social sorting). We use data from 33,690 American respondents from three national surveys: one longitudinal (1972–2020) and two fielded in 2020. There is evidence that identity alignment (i.e. sorting) has grown over time, but only among those who are most interested and attentive to politics and media. In 2020 surveys, we find no evidence that the frequency of media use was a significant predictor of social sorting. Instead, the composition of individuals' media diets predicted the alignment between their social and political identities.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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