“We have all backed into our political corners and filter every conversation though the bubble of our own political views,” said Andrew Selepak, a media professor and director of the graduate program in social media at the University of Florida. “We de-friend people on social media that we disagree with politically, and we even tend to live in neighborhoods with politically likeminded people.”
[Read: Can We Bring Back Civility by Talking About Politics Less?]
But what we’re seeing on social media is not representative of the vast majority of people in the U.S., Hudson said. There’s a “disconnect between what we hear on the news every day and the lived experience of most Americans,” she said. “It is a more hopeful story than what we tend to believe.”
A recent study of political tribalism in the U.S. showed that only 8 percent of Americans are among the most liberal, called “progressive activists” in the report. Six percent are the most conservative, called “devoted conservatives.” Another 19 percent are “traditional conservatives.”