Fringe News Networks: Dynamics of US News Viewership following the 2020 Presidential Election

Ashiqur R. KhudaBukhsh, Rupak Sarkar, Mark S. Kamlet, Tom M. Mitchell

Abstract: The growing political polarization of the American electorate over the last several decades has been widely studied and documented. During the administration of President Donald Trump, charges of “fake news” made social and news media not only the means but, to an unprecedented extent, the topic of political communication. This extreme political polarization continued through the election and all through the period up to the attempted takeover of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In this paper, we analyze this tumultuous phase in American history through the lens of news viewership. We consider the official YouTube channels of six US cable news networks across a wide political spectrum with a specific focus on three conservative fringe news networks. We analyze how the viewers reacted to the different ways the election outcome was covered by these news outlets. This paper makes two distinct types of contributions. The first is to introduce a novel methodology to analyze large social media data to study the dynamics of US news networks and their viewers. The second is to provide insights into what actually happened regarding these news networks and their viewerships during this volatile 64 day period. Our empirical evidence suggest that recent natural language processing advancements can be harnessed in a synergistic way to mine political insights from large scale social media data.