No abstract

This research shows how face masks took on discursive political significance during the early stages of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in the United States. The authors argue that political divisions over masks cannot be understood by looking to partisan differences in mask-wearing behaviors alone. Instead, they show how the mask became a political symbol enrolled into patterns of affective polarization. This study relies on qualitative and computational analyses of opinion articles ( n = 7,970) and supplemental analyses of Twitter data, the transcripts of major news networks, and longitudinal survey data. First, the authors show that antimask discourse was consistently marginal and that backlash against mask refusal came to prominence and did not decline even as masking behaviors normalized and partly depolarized. Second, they show that backlash against mask refusal, rather than mask refusal itself, was the primary way masks were discussed in relation to national electoral, governmental, and partisan themes.

No abstract

No abstract

This research shows how face masks became politicized during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. While differences in mask wearing behaviors between liberals and conservatives declined over the course of the pandemic, masks remained controversial in the American public sphere. We argue that political divisions over masks cannot be understood by looking to partisan differences in mask wearing behaviors alone. Instead, we show how the mask became a political symbol enrolled into larger patterns of affective polarization, defined by animosity toward the opposing party. This study relies primarily on a combination of qualitative coding and computational text analysis of a large corpus of opinion articles published during the first 10 months of 2020 (n = 7,970). It also relies on supplemental analyses of social media data (from Twitter), the transcripts of major news networks, and longitudinal survey data. We show that backlash against mask refusal—rather than mask refusal itself—was the primary way that masks took on political significance in the American public sphere. Anti-mask discourse consistently occupied a marginal role in the public sphere, while backlash against mask refusal came to prominence and did not decline even as mask wearing behaviors normalized and partly depolarized. We argue that the mask refusal backlash discourse appealed primarily to liberals and show that it was particularly resonant with national political discourses. Beyond the case, this research demonstrates how to use media data to understand how a new set of issues and objects becomes integrated into broader patterns of political polarization.