The middle-of-the-road, "mainstream" content of early television in mid-twentieth century America contributed to a dampening of citizens' extreme political views, say Filipe R. Campante and Daniel A. Hojman of Harvard. By studying Congressional elections as TV spread unevenly from 1946 to 1960, the researchers determined that television helped cause, rather than merely accompanied, the remarkable decrease in party polarization during that period. They estimate that TV induced approximately a 1-standard-deviation decrease in polarization per decade.
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