Like I said earlier, politicization causes polarization...
The effects of political affiliation on vaccine hesitancy:
How do attitudes toward vaccination change over the course of a public health crisis? We report results from a longitudinal survey of United States residents during six months (March 16 –August 16, 2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrary to past research suggesting that the increased salience...
journals.plos.org
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The most commonly checked news source for Republicans was Fox News (Republicans: 50%, Democrats: 8%; χ2 = 164.55, p < .001) and for Democrats was CNN (Democrats: 47%, Republicans: 23%, χ2 = 43.08, p < .001, see S6 Table)."
Besides having two different belief systems, it is obvious that the two groups also consume vastly different information.
The
χ2 is the notation for a chi-square test, which is to detect if there is a statistically significant difference between the expected proportional outcome (theoretical proportion) and actual proportions. The
p < .001 is the p-value, or loosely the probability that the results of the study were a random effect. Of note, statistical significance is usually applied to a cutoff (known as alpha level) of 0.05. P-values less than this are generally considered statistically significant. While I don't agree wholeheartedly with this, it is standard practice.