Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right

Abstract

Racial and ethnic division is a mainstay of the American social structure, and today these strains are exacerbated by political binaries. Moreover, the media has become increasingly polarized whereby certain media outlets intensify perceived differences between racial and ethnic groups, political alignments, and religious affiliations. Using data from a recent psychological study of the Alt-Right, we assess the associations between perceptions of social issues, feelings of status threat, trust in conservative media, and affiliation with the Alt-Right among White Americans. We find concern over more conservative social issues along with trust in conservative media explain a large portion of the variation in feelings of status threat among White Americans. Furthermore, more conservative social issues plus feeling of status threat significantly increase the odds of Alt-Right affiliation. Most surprisingly, however, trust in conservative media mitigated, instead of amplified, these associations. Implications and calls for future research are discussed.

Keywords

• status threat
• social issues
• conservative media
• White Americans
• extremism