The Logic of Connective Faction: How Digitally-Networked Elites and Hyper-Partisan Media Radicalize Politics

Recent disruptions to many democratic systems have been marked by the sudden circulation and mainstreaming of initially fringe far-right issues and ideas. This development occurs at a time when media and party systems have experienced rapid transformations. Ideological cleavages are increasingly emerging not only between but also within many political parties. Meanwhile, highly ideological and digitally networked media organizations create informational networks that feed into partisan politics. To understand how these developments are connected, we examine a case from the United States, where the topic of “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) diffused from being a far-right talking point into mainstream politics. We construct an original dataset of right-wing and mainstream news sources to analyze the role of Republican politicians in spreading this agenda item (n = 1,941,742). We then examine what distinguishes these Republicans from their co-partisans in terms of their ideological behavior in Congress and modes of connectivity. We find that a particular faction of Republican elites—who are particularly extreme in Congress and more connected to digital right-wing media—play an outsized role. The combination of ideology and connectivity, predicts whether a Republican Member of Congress will help spread the “CRT” agenda. We refer to this mechanism as an emerging “logic of connective faction” and discuss the implications for Congress, the Republican Party, media systems, and political actors beyond the United States.