Do Liberals Really Live in a Bubble? 3 Views
2. Josh Katz
Author Josh Katz looked into the bubble from a television entertainment angle. In a recent piece for The New York Times, he analyzed the primetime TV watching habits of the United States.
"Americans have been clustering themselves into cultural bubbles just as they have clustered in political bubbles. Their TV preferences confirm that," argued Katz.
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His prime example was contrasting the national viewership for the comedy show "Modern Family" and the reality TV program "Duck Dynasty."
Katz reported that "Modern Family," with its emphasis on family diversity and featuring a same-sex couple, was most popular in liberal urban environments like Boston and San Francisco.
By contrast "Duck Dynasty," with its emphasis on traditional family values and featuring devout Christians, was most popular in rural areas and the Deep South.
"When we looked at how many active Facebook users in a given ZIP code 'liked' certain TV shows, we found that the 50 most-liked shows clustered into three groups with distinct geographic distributions," wrote Katz.
"Together they reveal a national culture split among three regions: cities and their suburbs; rural areas; and what we're calling the extended Black Belt — a swath that extends from the Mississippi River along the Eastern Seaboard up to Washington, but also including city centers and other places with large nonwhite populations."
