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<p>Scholars have debated whether culture wars exist within and beyond the United States, yet while some studies do not directly connect polarization to the culture war, others lack systematic frameworks to distinguish moral differences from moral oppositions. This article addresses two questions: First, how can scholars distinguish and measure moral differences from moral oppositions? Second, what are the objects that manifest culture war contestation, and which actors engage most in the contention? I develop an integrative framework combining Moral Foundations Theory, sentence-embedding methods, and the categorization-association model of interpretation to analyze Canadian media coverage of three policy disputes (2022–2024): SOGI curriculum, affordable housing, and immigration policy. This framework conceptualizes two forms of opposition: <i>overt</i> (media frame issues through opposing virtue/vice valences) and <i>moderate</i> (media share same valence but vary systematically in intensity by ideology). Results show that policy domain explains more variation than ideology, as outlets frame the same foundation in opposing tones across policy disputes. Moreover, far-right and liberal media engage most actively in moralized framing, yet differences reflect moderate rather than overt oppositions, as the intensity of moral language varies systematically with media ideology, but not in opposing valences. Theoretically, these findings challenge the individualizing/binding distinction of moral foundations (Graham et al., <CitationRef CitationID="CR24">2009</CitationRef>), as well as the U.S. culture war model and the Canadian exceptionalism narrative. Methodologically, paragraph-level embeddings enable more flexible measurement of semantic intensity and directionality, advancing contextualized analysis of the culture war.</p>

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Mapping the Canadian Culture War: How Media Interpret and Moralize Policy Disputes across Issues and Ideology

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年2月13日

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  • Yi-Cheng Hsieh

摘要

Scholars have debated whether culture wars exist within and beyond the United States, yet while some studies do not directly connect polarization to the culture war, others lack systematic frameworks to distinguish moral differences from moral oppositions. This article addresses two questions: First, how can scholars distinguish and measure moral differences from moral oppositions? Second, what are the objects that manifest culture war contestation, and which actors engage most in the contention? I develop an integrative framework combining Moral Foundations Theory, sentence-embedding methods, and the categorization-association model of interpretation to analyze Canadian media coverage of three policy disputes (2022–2024): SOGI curriculum, affordable housing, and immigration policy. This framework conceptualizes two forms of opposition: overt (media frame issues through opposing virtue/vice valences) and moderate (media share same valence but vary systematically in intensity by ideology). Results show that policy domain explains more variation than ideology, as outlets frame the same foundation in opposing tones across policy disputes. Moreover, far-right and liberal media engage most actively in moralized framing, yet differences reflect moderate rather than overt oppositions, as the intensity of moral language varies systematically with media ideology, but not in opposing valences. Theoretically, these findings challenge the individualizing/binding distinction of moral foundations (Graham et al., 2009), as well as the U.S. culture war model and the Canadian exceptionalism narrative. Methodologically, paragraph-level embeddings enable more flexible measurement of semantic intensity and directionality, advancing contextualized analysis of the culture war.