Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Thesis

Terms of Use

© 2026 Reishiro Kawakami. All rights reserved. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may only be used for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes. For all other uses, including reproduction and distribution, please contact the copyright holder.

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Sociology & Anthropology Department

First Advisor

Nina Johnson

Second Advisor

Salvador Rangel

Abstract

This study examines how immigration is discussed across the U.S. political podcast ecosystem during the 2024 presidential election cycle, with a focus on differences across the political spectrum. While prior research on immigration attitudes has relied heavily on survey data, this study shifts attention to naturally occurring political communication by analyzing large-scale podcast transcripts. Drawing on a novel dataset of over 48,500 episodes (approximately 40,000 hours of audio) from the top 100 political podcasts ranked on Election Day, this paper combines keyword search, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis to investigate both the thematic structure and emotional tone of immigration discourse. The findings reveal notable asymmetries in both volume and framing. Conservative podcasts discuss immigration significantly more frequently than liberal or moderate counterparts. Topic modeling identifies recurring narrative clusters, such as crime and security, border enforcement, identity and assimilation, and culture war incidents, while temporal analysis shows that discourse spikes are closely tied to high-profile political events. Sentiment analysis further demonstrates that immigration discourse is highly affective, with emotions such as disgust and anger playing central roles, and with distinct emotional profiles emerging across political leanings and topics. Taken together, the results suggest that polarization around immigration extends beyond policy disagreements to divergent emotional and narrative structures. Immigration discourse in political podcasts operates as a site where issues of identity, threat, and national belonging are actively constructed and contested. By integrating computational methods with sociological perspectives, this study contributes to understanding contemporary political polarization and highlights podcasts as an influential yet underexamined medium in political communication.

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