This means, for example, that while those with highly partisan political views are significantly more likely to use partisan news media with a similar orientation, they are not necessarily less likely to use other news media with a different orientation. Dubois, E., & Blank, G. (2018). The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political interest and diverse media. Information, Communication & Society, 21(5), 729–745. Social scientists examine a range of different kinds of polarisation of the public, including ideological polarisation, affective polarisation, and news audience polarisation. As with any attempt to measure a change over time, decisions about what time frame to consider will influence conclusions, and often, there is little consistent data allowing for rigorous longitudinal analysis.

Evie's need to register many voices also brings forth a diary extract from her mother that neatly conveys the meeting of domestic and political tensions in the final days of British rule, as well as offering more fine descriptions, such as the onset of the harmattan-induced sand-storm. Williams's well-balanced, rhythmic sentences are perfect here for sketching variations in darkness and light.

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Webster, J. G., & Ksiazek, T. B. (2012). The dynamics of audience fragmentation: Public attention in an age of digital media. Journal of Communication, 62(1), 39–56.

Green, J., Edgerton, J., Naftel, D., Shoub, K. & Cranmer, S. J. (2020). Elusive consensus: Polarization in elite communication on the COVID-19 pandemic. Science Advances, eabc2717. Nisbet, E. C., Cooper, K. E., & Garrett, R. K. (2015). The partisan brain: How dissonant science messages lead conservatives and liberals to (dis)trust science. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1),36–66.

Fiorina, M. P., & Abrams, S. J. (2008). Political polarization in the American public. Annual Review of Political Science, 11(1), 563–588.

Castro-Herrero, L., Nir, L., & Skovsgaard, M. (2018). Bridging gaps in cross-cutting media exposure: The role of public service broadcasting. Political Communication, 35(4), 542–565. There is an extensive literature in political science and sociology about the drivers of polarisation, with considerable attention to elite cues from politicians (Rogowski and Sutherland 2016; Iyengar et al. 2012) and to social dynamics including social homophily and various kinds of social sorting – all predominantly rooted in our offline lives, where we work, who we spend time with, where we live (see e.g., Guess et al. 2018; McPherson et al. 2001; Mason 2015). In summary, the picture on polarisation is complex and research is often limited outside the United States. Overall, ideological polarisation has, in the long run, declined in many countries, but affective polarisation has in some cases, but not all, increased. News audience polarisation is much lower in most European countries, including the United Kingdom. Much depends on the specifics of individual countries and what point in time one measures change from, and there are no universal patterns, suggesting country-specific factors drive national developments, including most importantly the behaviour of political elites and social dynamics. Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoulos, A., Simon, F. M., & Nielsen, R. K. (2020b). Information inequality in the UK coronavirus communications crisis. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Kaiser, J., & Rauchfleisch, A. (2020). Birds of a feather get recommended together: Algorithmic homophily in YouTube’s channel recommendations in the United States and Germany. Social Media + Society, 6(4).

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Yeo, S. K., Xenos, M. A., Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2015). Selecting our own science: How communication contexts and individual traits shape information seeking. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 172–191. Iyengar, S., Sood, G., & Lelkes, Y. (2012). Affect, not ideology. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3), 405–431. We seek to identify (a) areas where we believe there is a clear majority view in academic research, (b) areas where there are some empirical studies but not necessarily convergent interpretations, and (c) areas where there is at this point little evidence to help us understand a situation that is rapidly evolving in terms of both media structure and media substance (as the constant evolution of the digital media environment as well as communications around the coronavirus pandemic has shown). Reiljan, A. (2020). ‘Fear and loathing across party lines’ (also) in Europe: Affective polarisation in European party systems. European Journal of Political Research, 59(2), 376–396. Thorson, K. (2020). Attracting the news: Algorithms, platforms, and reframing incidental exposure. Journalism, 21(8), 1067–1082.