Are Late Night TV Shows in the Polarizing Society? Examining the Ambivalence of New Version of Politcal Partsanship in the United States? Gregory Gondwe * University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA * Corresponding author: Gregory Gondwe, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA, Tel: 303-492-5007; E-mail: Gregory.Gondwe@colorado.edu Received date: Nov 07, 2017; Accepted date: Nov 27, 2017; Published date: Dec 04, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Gondwe G. This is an open-access artcle distributed under the terms of the Creatve Commons Atributon License, which permits unrestricted use, distributon, and reproducton in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citaton: Gondwe G. Are Late Night TV Shows in the Polarizing Society? Examining the Ambivalence of New Version of Politcal Partsanship in the United States? Global Media Journal 2017, 15:29. Abstract This study examines the role of Late-Night Television shows (LNTV) play in the United States and their contributed towards the politcal polarizaton society. The study used qualitatve content analyses to generate theme emerging from 87 questonnaires that collected from an online survey conducted with 23 LNTV show hosts in the United States. The fndings indicate that many LNTVS hosts have a partsan afliaton that they contagiously infuse into their audience. On the other hand, the fndings indicate that LNTV hosts have less freedom to create their own content, therefore, providing less ethnical consideraton for their audience. Most of all, the fndings indicate that LNTV shows rank politcs as providing most newsworthy content than any criteria. Keywords: Late-night-television; Polarizaton; Media- content; Partsanship Introducton The 2016 United States presidental campaigns and electons presented a more polarized society [1]. Current debates in media and communicaton research are peppered with the noton that social and politcal polarizatons are rapidly increasing [2-4]. Critcs atribute this rise to the 2008 Presidental campaigns. According to the 2014 Pew data, the percentage divide of polarizaton has skyrocketed from 10% to over 21% since 1994. In its survey of 10 thousand partcipants natonwide, the study found out that while 92% of the Republicans were to the right of the median Democrat, 94% of the Democrats were also to the lef of the median Republican. This implies that while there has been a decrease in the ideological overlap between the Democratc and the Republican Partes, their ideological thinking has become more aligned to politcal partsanship. Abramowitz and Saunders [2] conclude in their detailed survey analysis that the increase in ideological polarizaton in the United States are refected in large diferent outlooks between the Democrats and the Republicans; red state voters and blue state voters; religious vs. secular, and involve a large segment of the public incorporatng most informed, interested, and actve citzens. Unfortunately, such a trend has equally taken precedence in today’s media as refected in Late Night Television Shows. It is, therefore, the objectve of this study to examine the infuence of Late Night TV Shows in the polarizaton of the US society. It further seeks to fnd out the ethical commitments of the LNTVS and how much they base their programming on politcs while ignoring pertnent issues afectng society. Overall, the study seeks to reinforce the inital objectve of traditonal media such as late-night TV shows in service the general public and not dividing people through politcal afliatons. The study used qualitatve content analyses to generate theme emerging from 87 questonnaires that collected from an online survey conducted with 23 LNTV show hosts in the United States. Findings indicate that LNTV shows in the United States are frst a main news source of a young generaton, and are increasingly widening the gap of politcal partsanship. Ratonale of the study Studies that have sought to understand and contextualize media polarizaton in the United States have studied the phenomenon in a broader perspectve. In similar studies, media is taken as a whole without characterizing it to either traditonal or non-traditonal. Prior [4] study employed a similar approach, therefore encountering challenges in quantfying the causal link between partsan messages and changing attudes. Therefore, the signifcance of this study lies in the examinaton of the phenomenon from a narrower perspectve of LNTV, hence giving us an opportunity to understand this polarizaton from a key, yet overlooked standpoint. The three overarching questons the study addressed were: RQ. 1: To what extend do LNTV host safeguard balanced reportng that accommodates various opinions and feelings of other politcal partes? Research Article Global Media Journal ISSN 1550-7521 Vol.15 No.29:86 2017 This article is available from: globalmediajournal.com 1