At the Extremes: Assessing Readability, Grade Level, Sentiment, and Tone in US Media Outlets

ABSTRACT

This study examines the question of asymmetry/symmetry regarding the use of language in partisan media outlets in the US. Some research has suggested that conservatives and conservative media are unique in how they present information to their audience, positing that conservatives use simpler, more uncivil language. Others have noted that some of these matters, such as use of uncivil language, applies to both conservative and liberal outlets. The current study adds to this literature by examining whether the ideological leanings of news sources correlate with reading ease, level of negativity (sentiment), and level of formality (tone). Specifically, we examine whether only conservative outlets use simpler, negative, and less formal language or if these trends appear for media outlets across the ideological spectrum. Our findings find support for the symmetry hypothesis. Indeed, our findings suggest that ideological extremity and partisanship strength correlate with use of easier-to-read language.

KEYWORDS:

• Readability
• journalism
• partisan media
• sentiment
• tone
• polarization
• extremity
• news

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We removed any stories that went outside the range of our outcome variables. For example, if a story came back with a negative number for the Flesh Reading Ease measure we would remove it from the data set.

2 Because the Ad Fontes measure ranges from -42 to 42, we added 42 to the original measure to create a scale that ranged from 0 (very liberal) to 84 (very conservative). We then squared this recalculated measure instead of using the original measure to get the full range of scores tied to the ideological leanings of the outlets.