Politics and sports teams: are we treating them the same?
By Katie Ariganello
With November midterm elections quickly approaching, political conversations are top of mind and some people are treating politics like they do sports teams – a competition.
Virginia Tech expert Megan Duncan, an assistant professor in the School of Communication, says that both our identity as political partisans and sports partisans (team fandom) are influenced by our social circles and geography.
“People who have entrenched identities around political ideologies and sports fandom are more likely to see bias in news coverage about their “team” whether that’s a political party or a professional sports franchise,” says Duncan. “Additionally, those folks are more likely to express their opinion to attack an opposing team than people without strong identities. That can make online commenting around both sports and politics uncivil spaces.”
“It’s a natural human reflex to separate society into us-versus-them groups. It helps us sort our opinions and find connections in a complex world. Hanging out with likeminded people feels comforting and reinforces our sense of self.”
Duncan says that there are ways to reduce this competitive likelihood of how we treat politics and come together as a group instead of two competitive forces.
For example, Duncan says that instead of lobbying vitriol against a person wearing a cross-divisional rival’s jersey, serve them with a fact about the number of passing yards in the last game. Or rather than insulting the looks of a person who identifies with the opposing political party, share evidence of the claim you’re making to support your viewpoint.
“Remember, it’s not just the person on the other side of the argument you’re trying to persuade,” says Duncan. “There’s likely people listening with uncrystallized opinions who are listening to both sides to make up their minds. That’s your target audience.”
About Duncan
Megan Duncan is an assistant professor in the Virginia Tech School of Communication. She primarily focuses her research on news credibility, political news, digital news audience engagement, data journalism, and survey experiments.
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