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Article-level Slant and Polarization of News Consumption on Social Media

Author

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  • Braghieri, Luca
  • Eichmeyer, Sarah
  • Levy, Ro'ee
  • Mobius, Markus
  • Steinhardt, Jacob
  • Zhong, Ruiqi

Abstract

We fine-tune a large language model on expert ratings to construct a content-based, article-level measure of news slant, applied to the near universe of articles (∼1 million) published online by the top ∼100 U.S. outlets in 2019. 70% of the variation in slant occurs within rather than across outlets, leaving wide scope for within-outlet ideological selection. Consistent with this, polarization in news consumption on Facebook—the gap in average slant between articles Republicans and Democrats consume—equals 89% of the distance between the average New York Times and Fox News article and is 53% larger than outlet-level measures imply.

Suggested Citation

  • Braghieri, Luca & Eichmeyer, Sarah & Levy, Ro'ee & Mobius, Markus & Steinhardt, Jacob & Zhong, Ruiqi, 2024. "Article-level Slant and Polarization of News Consumption on Social Media," CEPR Discussion Papers 19807, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19807
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    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP19807
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    Cited by:

    1. Nathan Canen & Ted Enamorado, 2026. "When Predictions Become Regressors: A Split-Sample Correction for Biases in Downstream Inference," Papers 2608.02909, arXiv.org.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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