Research

We document how politicians politicize public debates. Analyzing 4.75 million tweets related to 57 mass shooting events, two-way fixed effects and event studies results show that the partisan and issue-polarized content of tweets systematically increases after a politician first tweets about an event. Analysis of the timing of interventions suggests that politicians do not intervene in response to specific characteristics of the event, nor to immediate changes in the debate. Interventions by non-politicians focal influencers do not have similar effects. We show how the rhetorical supply of politicians explains the polarizing effect of their interventions.

Online creators have become a central source of political information for young adults in recent years, and over the same period, young men have shifted toward the political right relative to young women. We examine whether these two major developments are connected by focusing on “The Joe Rogan Experience”, the leading long-form podcast, which has a disproportionately male audience. Our identification leverages the timing and location of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) events, for which Rogan has long served as the lead commentator. In a difference-in-differences design, we find that local UFC events trigger a significant increase in Google searches and in time spent consuming Joe Rogan episodes among young men. Applying text analysis to podcast transcripts, we document a pronounced shift in Rogan’s political rhetoric: until 2020, Rogan frequently expressed support for Sanders with left-populist rhetoric; starting in 2021, his commentary became supportive of Trump with a right-populist slant. Using administrative voter files, we show that exposure to UFC events until 2020 increased Democratic voting in primaries with Sanders, while after that, exposure to UFC events increased Republican voting in primaries with Trump with all effects concentrated among young men.