"Stick to Sports": Evidence from Sports Media on the Origins and Consequences of Newly Politicized Attitudes
Politics now intrudes into many aspects of social and economic life. How does this politicization occur? We consider two pathways. In one, political elites introduce new considerations into an apolitical setting. In the other, public reactions to a formerly non-political entity produce politicization without elite guidance. We use these perspectives to study the origins of politicized attitudes towards ESPN, a major sports media outlet involved in recent controversies where politics and sports intersect. We find evidence politicization is a top-down process driven by political elites. In survey-linked web browsing data and a survey experiment, exposure to political media leads the public to evaluate ESPN in political terms. In contrast, ESPN’s typical sports coverage fails to produce politicization. We also find these newly politicized attitudes do not reduce use of ESPN, showing the intrusion of politics into an apolitical setting may not displace other considerations underlying behavior.