Political Polarization in the US Mass Media After 2016

Abstract. On the one hand, Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections in 2016 contributes to academic and publicistic discussions about increasing ideological polarization in American society. On the other hand, Trump’s term can be described in the terms of permanent conflict between the President and mainstream mass media. Could this conflict be a particular case of ideological polarization between two main political parties or is it the solidarity of all journalistic community rebelled against right-wing populism? The purpose of this paper is to answer these questions. The work will consist of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. The introduction will justify the topicality and scientific relevance of the work. The first chapter will be theoretical and will contain a literary review, conceptualization, a description of the empirical database, operationalization, description of methods. The second chapter will describe the results of sentiment analysis and wordcloud analyse of newspapers. The third chapter will describe the results of sentiment analysis and wordcloud analyse of television. In conclusion, summary will be made. Key words: Trump, political polarization, mediatization, right-wing populism, partisan media, non-partisan media.