In my previous blog post, I talked about the recent election that has exasperated this country’s self-concept and group concept, and how these two theories work together to cause distress and division within the United States. In this post, I want to focus on political partisanship on how this relates back to the two theories I mentioned in the other post.
Political Partisanship has a skewed definition depending on who or what is referring to it. However, in our case, I will be discussing political partisanship as a person or group of people who strongly identify with a single political party, either Democratic or Republican and give little thought to the other sides views and feel that any other party besides their own is wong and has incorrect and even sometimes corrupt ideals. Due to this a lot of the media we consume tends to be tailored towards what we want to see and is even biased. News channels such as Fox News and Breitbart New tied for the most bias (businessinsider.com) While channels like AP and PBS ranked least biased. However, when we look at the same survey from those who identify with either of the major parties we see a stark difference. Republicans tend to view channels such as Fox as not bias and Channels such as AP as very biased. While Democrats tend to view channels such as MSNBC as not biased and Fox news as very biased. This major disconnect shows that many of those in this country have a very incorrect view of how biased the news they are getting is.
Group identity and political partisanship go hand and hand. Due to this need for positive affirmations about one’s own group, I feel that it is to be expected that all of these news channels are skewed in favor of their viewers and against all others. However, this will only perpetuate the divide in this country and does nothing to help the future of this country.
Work Cited:
Lewis, Sophie. “Joe Biden Breaks Obama’s Record for Most Votes Ever Cast for a U.S. Presidential Candidate.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 13 Nov. 2020,
Ralph, Pat. “These Are the Most and Least Biased News Outlets in the US, According to Americans.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 2 Sept. 2018,
-E.G.