Democratic Institutions Under Threat: Corrosive Frames, Internet News, and the U.S. Supreme Court

Are democratic institutions under threat in the United States? We examine an understudied democratic bedrock: the judiciary and, in particular, the U.S. Supreme Court. We draw on data from “SCOTUSapp,” a tool that provides a database of 100,000+ news articles across thousands of unexamined sources. We find a new media environment where the Court receives attention from thousands of ideologically fragmented outlets. Additionally, some framings of the Court are potentially corrosive. We then use two experiments to examine the effects of these corrosive news frames. The first experiment (October 2021) provides evidence that frames portraying the Court as embroiled in secrecy, hypocrisy, illegitimacy, and politics cause a decrease in support for judicial independence. These frames are influential among Republicans and Democrats. The second experiment (May 2023) follows Dobbs, which severely damaged judicial faith among Democrats, and shows that corrosive frames lead to a corresponding decline only among strong Republicans.