Political Pundits and the Maintenance of Ideological Coalitions

Political ideologies help groups advance diverse sets of interests under common agendas. However, it is unclear how these groups maintain their norms regarding what it means to be a member in good standing in a dynamic information environment. Building on theories of “long” political coalitions, we hypothesize that ideological elites’ rhetorical influence on one another will tend to be concentrated and specialized with respect to specific concepts. We find support for this expectation using an original dataset of over 1,000 prominent political pundits in the United States, in which we infer coalition membership and the diffusion of novel language over a range of specific concepts. While pundits may discuss many concepts, they tend to “send” language to other pundits in relatively few, resulting in both concentration and specialization of influence within coalitions. These results clarify conceptual distinctions between political ideologies and political philosophies, and demonstrate real-time dynamics of contemporary ideological coalitions.

Duke Scholars

Author Jon Green Political Science