Keeping score
The Polarization Map
Hundreds of outlets, scored every week on how hot they write, how much of it is aimed at an enemy, and how sealed their world is. No left-right axis. No truth score. Coming soon.
What the map measures
Three things, kept separate on purpose. Heat is how sensational the writing is: the share of an outlet’s recent headlines and openings that use high-arousal, moral-emotional and urgency language. Enemy is how much of it is aimed at an opposing group, person or institution, and how hostile the framing is. Closure is how much of the outlet’s linking stays inside its own cluster: whether it cites anyone outside its world.
What it does not measure
Whether an outlet is right or wrong. The map never scores truth, and it has no left-right axis. Outlets are positioned by who links to whom, so the clusters you see are the clusters that exist, not a judgment we made. The labels on clusters are written by a person and say what the cluster is, not where it sits on a political line.
How to read a score
Every score is shown as a band, not a decimal, and every band opens to the items that produced it, with the flagged words highlighted. If you disagree with a score, the evidence is right there.
Embedding
Every view can be embedded. Set the view, the outlets and the metric you want, copy the embed code, and the chart carries its own link back here. Live embeds update as the map does; archived embeds stay as they were on the day you copied them.
When
The map is being built now. This page will carry it the day it goes live, and the first pieces drawn from it will appear in the Polarization Map section.