Culture War Fact

Culture Wars: Fact or Fiction? For many years, the term ‘culture war’ was highly prevalent in society. Mass media, politicians, and even the common people believed a culture war existed in American society. What, therefor, is a culture war and does it truly exist? In his book “Culture War? The Myth of Polarized America”, Morris P. Fiorina, with the help of Samuel Abrams and Jeremy Pope, defines the culture war term as a “displacement of the classic economic conflicts that animated twentieth-century politics in the advanced democracies by newly emergent morals a religious ones.” Simply put, a culture war is the tendency for sides to become polarized when approaching social and economic issues. Fiorina proposes that the culture war so many believe exist is actually just a myth, conjured by different sides of the same story and misconceptions about the political status of the nation. His argument against this theory was that rather than most Americans being on one end of the spectrum or another,

The Myth of Polarized America” is sadly outdated. Written over a decade ago, it is important to look at the culture of America today and see whether anything has changed between then and now. In an article by Pew Research Center of Journalism titled Political Polarization & Media Habits, Amy Mitchell discussed how people obtain information about their government and politics in three separate instances: news, social media and how others speak when around family or friends. Findings from 2014 concluded that while only about 20% of the public consider themselves to be far left or right on the political spectrum, those percentages had the most impact on politics than the remaining 80%. With the most access to media coverage that benefits their voices, the activists and extremists views are more capable of being heard. Media continues to favor these voices and because of this, the myth about a culture war has yet to fade after all this