Division, not reconciliation: Mapping news media polarisation during Australia's indigenous voice to parliament referendum

Concerns about rising social and political polarisation are widespread, with blame often attributed to partisan or biased news coverage despite limited empirical evidence. Previous studies have focussed on audiences, either their political leanings or polarised responses to news, offering limited insight into patterns of viewpoint diversity within news content. This study introduces an approach to measuring news media polarisation beyond the left–right divide, applied to Australia's 2023 referendum on establishing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Using manual content analysis of 354 articles from 26 mainstream and fringe outlets, we identified actors, positions, claims, justifications, emotions and values to distinguish between ideological, affective and value-based polarisation. The findings reveal a convergence on actors, positions and claims associated with campaign reporting that highlighted party-political horse-race dynamics. Justifications relied on personal experiences to support the Voice and unsourced statistics to both attack and support it. Expressions of emotion predominantly conveyed hope, alongside negative emotions such as fear, as well as rhetorical devices such as sarcasm that served to communicate contempt or derision. Values like social equality were prominent, while discussions about the Voice's implications, its significance for Indigenous Australians, and its potential impact on inclusion and reconciliation were rarer than attacks on the opposing side. These findings offer practical insights for journalists and media practitioners about the performance of Australian media in covering divisive issues. They also contribute to broader debates about journalism's role in times of destructive polarisation.