Digital Media Bias in a Polarized US Society: The First 100 Days of Trump’s Second Presidency

Abstract

This paper examines digital media bias in the United States during the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second presidency. The aim of this study is to identify the dynamics of digital media bias toward the 47th US President between January 20 and May 1, 2025. Research question: How did the tone of news coverage about Donald Trump and his administration change in American digital media outlets positioning themselves as adherents of centrist, left-wing, and right-wing ideological leanings during the 100 days following his inauguration? In this paper, as in the two previous studies, the authors have used automated quantitative content analysis programs for sentiment analysis of texts and the creation of a dataset of publications (n=1000) posted on 20 top US digital media outlets. This approach has enabled identification of the ideologically differentiated about Donald Trump from January 20 to May 1, 2025, a period marked by the intensity of the 47th president's implemented innovations. Furthermore, the chosen methodology has enabled comparison of the obtained data with results reflecting bias during the first stage of the election campaign (from November 15, 2022, to March 30, 2023) and during the period between the two assassination attempts on the Republican candidate (from July 13 to September 22, 2024). This research, on the one hand, corroborated the conclusions from previous studies regarding the rigid institutionalization of ideological attitudes in the US digital media space, and on the other hand, empirically demonstrated that media bias mechanisms are capable of adapting to a changing political landscape. The rise of a Republican president led to a sharp increase in positive bias in conservative media. At the same time, opposing digital media managed to shift from overwhelmingly negative rhetoric to a more balanced, albeit still critical, model of coverage of the Republican administration. This confirmed the hypothesis that shifts in governing paradigms may influence established patterns of political bias in digital media. However, this transformation does not rule out of the further deepening of polarization in American society.