It's an interesting theory, but one of the confounding variables may be the emergence of the internet as a dominant news medium during the same period. The abil

It's an interesting theory, but one of the confounding variables may be the emergence of the internet as a dominant news medium during the same period. The ability to choose your online sources of political information (e.g., Drudge Report vs. Huffington Post, etc.) would presumably trigger the same mechanism of action for polarization. It's also important to note that, even if it's true that deregulation originally contributed to polarization, that's not necessarily a strong argument for re-regulating these industries. Access to specialized content is an inevitable, technologically driven market trend, because people prefer experiences that are tailored to their tastes. In a sense, the polarization we see may have been lurking within us all along, masked by the limited choices available for expressing political or cultural preferences when choosing which media content to intellectually consume. Once we are able to act on those preferences, the previously subtle differences become self reinforcing.