Can Ohioans become less politically polarized? One organization is trying

By Leah Shepard/Kent State NewsLab

According to a 2023 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, American politicians have been becoming steadily more ideologically polarized for decades, “with little overlap” remaining between the opinions held by Republican and Democratic voters. 

Voters are becoming more emotionally polarized, too. Emotional polarization is known formally as “affective polarization,” and is defined as the gap between positive feelings toward one’s own party and negative feelings toward the opposing party.

In 2018, retiree Beverly Horstman saw political polarization in her country and decided something had to be done. 

“I had never seen the nation as it was then, and it’s more divided now.” said Horstman, who is now a coordinator for the state of Ohio with Braver Angels, a nonprofit that works to fight political division. “I have grandchildren, and I was very concerned about what type of world are we leaving to them, what type of nation are we leaving to them? I felt like I needed to try to do something to make it better.”

To combat this phenomenon, Braver Angels works at the grassroots level across the country to encourage civil conversation and understanding. Their work includes hosting and moderating workshops where conservatives and liberals can discuss their opposing views. There are around 111 alliances in 42 states, each co-run by a liberal, or a “blue chair,” and a conservative, or a “red chair.”

Horstman attributes much of contemporary political division to the “siloing” of Americans into their own media bubbles. As a result, she said, people see the other side as the enemy. 

“We stop looking at… our humanity, and we start stereotyping people,” she said. “The first thing that happens is you start looking at people as ‘other.’”

Many have blamed the rise of the internet and social media algorithms for these rises in polarization, but experts say that the trend started even earlier. 

Michael Beam, director of the School of Emerging Media and Technology at Kent State University, said the root cause can be traced to media deregulation dating back decades.

“The Telecommunications Act of 1997 in particular led to media entities being able to have greater concentration in the market,” he said. “And it really opened the door to cable partisan news.”

Beam said Fox News and MSNBC are examples of the “biased” news networks born out of this era.

Even before that, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration got rid of the “fairness doctrine,” a policy that required broadcast news networks to offer equal air-time to opposing political candidates. Beam said Republican talk-radio exploded in popularity afterward. 

“I think that partisan radio move was really what Fox News took note of, and said ‘hey, we can do this on T.V.,” he said.

For several election cycles, social media algorithms on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter isolated people in “filter bubbles.” Since then, Beam said, Americans have separated themselves onto different social networks altogether — including X (formerly Twitter), now owned by Elon Musk; Truth Social, owned by a Trump company; TikTok, where users primarily see algorithm-driven content and not posts from people they know; and Bluesky, a relative newcomer. 

Beam calls this “platform polarization.”

“All these niche social media platforms are starting to rise up and they’re really sorted by partisanship,” Beam said. “I would argue that what we’re seeing right now is not the algorithm isolating us, it’s we’re opting as users to go to the spaces where our tribe is. That’s not the algorithm’s doing, that’s me being sick of seeing the other side.”

Beam said he fears stronger laws regulating media, paired with “radical” shifts in political power, could be a slippery slope leading to erosion of First Amendment rights and protections. 

“I’m very wary of media policy that engages in censorship,” he said. “If you create a media policy tool on misinformation or disinformation, or you close down TikTok because of its potential for propaganda from a foreign actor, that sort of opens the door for whoever’s in power to stop the things that they like.”

Kelly Zimmerman, another Braver Angels coordinator based near Cincinnati, runs workshops for the organization. One type of workshop he runs surrounds “family and politics.” 

He said this is a common reason why people become involved with Braver Angels.

“They have had these family relationships that have been impacted by polarization and they’re looking for help and guidance on how to navigate that,” Zimmerman said.

This, Zimmerman said, happens when people hold their political ties more closely than their personal ones. While politics can be an important part of one’s identity, he said, balance is important. 

“Many people put political identity as unintentionally taking a much bigger priority in relation to their other identities,” he said. “Even overtaking their family identity.” 

Horstman believes grassroots organization and facilitating meaningful conversations are key if people want to find a way to be less divided.

“We’re really looking at how do we build trust in each other, how do we build trust in our systems and institutions, which is very eroded because of polarization,” she said. “And we do that by bringing the relationship and humanity back into focus again.”

This story was originally published by the Kent State NewsLab, a collaborative news outlet publishing journalism by Kent State students.