Sowing Distrust of the News Media as an Electoral Strategy

2020 ◽  
pp. 426-454
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Ladd ◽  
Alexander R. Podkul
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Media Effects ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Information ◽  
General Decline ◽  
The Media ◽  
Second Period ◽  
Partisan News

Since the 1970s, trust in the news media went through a period of general decline and then a second period (since 2000) of polarization by party. Currently, trust in the media is low among those of all political affiliations, but it is substantially lower among Republicans than Democrats. Scholars have investigated a variety of plausible causes of this increasing distrust of the media, yet the largest source of this change seems to be increasing amounts of criticism of the institutional media from politicians and political pundits. This trend also has important consequences for how people acquire political information and make election decisions. Those who distrust the news media are more likely to consume information from partisan news outlets, and are more resistant to a fairly wide variety of media effects on public opinion. Because it can partially insulate one’s supporters from many types of media persuasion, partisan attacks on the news media have become an increasingly prominent political tactic.

Partisan media effects beyond one-shot experimental designs

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Kathleen Searles ◽  
Joshua P. Darr ◽  
Mingxiao Sui ◽  
Nathan Kalmoe ◽  
Raymond Pingree ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Media Effects ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Repeated Exposure ◽  
Experimental Designs ◽  
Fox News ◽  
Partisan Media ◽  
News Effects ◽  
Partisan News

Abstract Previous study demonstrates that partisans perceive in-party news outlets as fair, and out-party news outlets as unfair. However, much of this study relies on one-shot designs. We create an ecologically valid design that randomly assigns participants to news feeds within a week-long online news portal where the balance of in-party and out-party news outlets has been manipulated. We find that sustained exposure to a feed that features out-party news media attenuates Democrats' beliefs that Fox News is unfair, but the same is not true for Republican's perceptions of MSNBC's fairness. Unexpectedly, repeated exposure to in-party news did increase Republicans' beliefs that Fox News is unfair. This study updates our understanding of partisan news effects in a fragmented online news environment.

scholarly journals Public opinion on age stereotypes during the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Gabriella Sandstig
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
News Media ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Risk Group ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Age Stereotypes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gender Education ◽  
The Media

The news media can both mirror age stereotypes held by the public, as well as contribute to constructing or amplifying them. The first risk group identified in the pandemic was older adults. They are generally not so visible in the media, but during the pandemic, they were in focus. This study analyses to what extent the public agrees with age stereotypes during the COVID-19 pandemic and what characterizes the groups that hold them. Survey data from 04/14/20-06/28/20 on a national sample (6000) of the population of Sweden is used. The results, contrary to the expectation that stereotypes of older adults should dominate the public opinion, rather the stereotype of younger people not distancing themselves enough is the most common. However, the corresponding stereotype of older adults not doing the same is the second most common. In a non-crises situation, the most common stereotype of older adults is that they have poor cognitive abilities. However, this stereotype is rare during the pandemic. The characteristic of the group that agree with the stereotypes are that they are young rather than old. There are also differences by gender, education and residential area, but they vary depending on the specific age stereotype in question.

The Media and Political Behavior

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hajo G. Boomgaarden ◽  
Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Media Effects ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Media Effect ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Media ◽  
Media Environments ◽  
Media Systems

Media are key for the functioning of democracy. It is the essential link between politics and citizens, providing critical information and interpretation of politics and room for debate. Given this central role of the media for democratic political processes, questions about how mediated political information would affect citizens’ perceptions of and attitudes toward politics, as well as ultimately political behavior, have been dominant in research in the field of political communication. While vast amounts of mid-range theories and empirical insights speak in favor of influences of media on citizens, there is little in terms of a universal theoretical framework guiding political media effects research, which makes it difficult to give a conclusive answer to the question: how and, in particular, how much do the media matter? It may matter for some people under some conditions in some contexts relating to some outcome variables. Technological changes in media systems pose additional challenges, both conceptually and methodologically, to come to comprehensive assessments of media influences on citizens’ political cognitions, attitudes, or behaviors. Research needs to be clearer as to which conceptualization of media is followed and how such conceptualization may interact with other dimensions of media attributes. Measurement of media use and reception needs to take into account the increasing complexities of how citizens encounter political information, and it requires alignment with the conceptualization of media. Political media effect theories should not continue developing side by side, but should attempt to find a place in a more comprehensive model and take into account how they relate to and possibly interact with other approaches. In sum, the field of political media effects, while vast and covering a range of aspects, would do well to consider its role and purpose in increasingly complex media environments and, accordingly, provide more integrative perspectives, conceptually, methodologically, and theoretically.

What Drives Selective Exposure to Political Information in Spain?

2022 ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
Lidia Valera-Ordaz ◽  
María Luisa Humanes Humanes
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Press ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Types ◽  
Logistic Regressions ◽  
Television Market ◽  
Digital Press

Communication research underlines two types of selective exposure to the media: one guided by ideological-partisan affiliations and one guided by interest in politics. This work will compare both motivations in the consumption of political information through three media types (digital press, television, and radio) by Spanish citizens during the 2019 November General Election. Through multinomial logistic regressions applied to a representative post-electoral survey, results show that ideological-partisan orientations are the most important variables governing selective exposure, especially for the digital press and the radio. Besides confirming ideological selective exposure, the data highlight an important tendency towards selective avoidance of news media perceived as ideologically incongruent. For television, however, both socio-demographic trends and ideological orientations exhibit a similar explanatory weight, which suggests that political segmentation of the Spanish television market is still being deployed by communication groups, in comparison with the press and the radio.

scholarly journals Do Policy Statements on Media Effects Faithfully Represent the Science?

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malte Elson ◽  
Christopher J. Ferguson ◽  
Mary Gregerson ◽  
Jerri Lynn Hogg ◽  
James Ivory ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Media Effects ◽  
News Media ◽  
American Psychological Association ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Release Policy ◽  
Policy Statements ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
State Of The Science

Professional advocacy associations such as the American Psychological Association (APA) and American Academy of Pediatrics commonly release policy statements regarding science and behavior. Policymakers and the general public may assume that such statements reflect objective conclusions, but their actual fidelity in representing science remains largely untested. For example, in recent decades, policy statements related to media effects have been released with increasing regularity. However, they have often provoked criticisms that they do not adequately reflect the state of the science on media effects. The News Media, Public Education and Public Policy Committee (a standing committee of APA’s Division 46, the Media Psychology and Technology division) reviewed all publicly available policy statements on media effects produced by professional organizations and evaluated them using a standardized rubric. It was found that current policy statements tend to be more definitive than is warranted by the underlying science, and often ignore conflicting research results. These findings have broad implications for policy statements more generally, outside the field of media effects. In general, the committee suggests that professional organizations run the risk of misinforming the public when they release policy statements that do not acknowledge debates and inconsistencies in a field, or limitations of methodology. In formulating policy statements, advocacy organizations may wish to focus less on claiming consensus and more on acknowledging areas of agreement, areas of disagreement, and limitations.

Politicized Science Communication: Predicting Scientists’ Acceptance of Overstatements by Their Knowledge Certainty, Media Perceptions, and Presumed Media Effects

2018 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 1150-1170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Senja Post ◽  
Natalia Ramirez
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Media Effects ◽  
News Media ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Anthropogenic Global Warming ◽  
Alternative Hypotheses ◽  
The Media ◽  
Hostile Media

Partisans in mediated conflicts usually perceive hostile news media, anticipate undesired media effects, and intend to engage discursively. It is hypothesized that hostile media perceptions also encourage polarizing communication. This is tested for scientists involved in a politicized science dispute. German climate scientists ( n = 131) firmly believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Yet not all dismiss alternative hypotheses altogether. Results indicate that the more certain climate scientists are of AGW, the more they perceive that the news media downplay AGW and presume that the media nourish politicians’ doubts about it. This explains their justifications of overstatements of scientific findings in public.

scholarly journals Semantic Network Analysis of Legacy News Media Perception in South Korea: The Case of PyeongChang 2018

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4027 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sung-Won Yoon ◽  
Sae Chung
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
South Korea ◽  
News Media ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Significant Implication ◽  
Semantic Network Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Conservative Media

This paper aims at exploring how conservative and liberal newspapers in South Korea framed PyeongChang 2018 directly. Our research questions addressed four points: first, different attitudes of conservative and liberal newspapers in the PyeongChang news reporting; second, their success and failure in influencing public opinion; third, South Koreans’ perceptions on PyeongChang 2018; and fourth, South Korean public reliance on the newspapers. To investigate the framing differences, we employed a big data analytic method (automated semantic network analysis) with NodeXL (analytic software). Conclusively, we were able to find out four main findings. First, the conservative media showed pessimistic attitudes to the Olympics, and the liberal media did conversely. Second, despite the conservative media’s resourcefulness, they could not succeed in influencing public opinion. Third, the conservative media perceived the Olympics as an undesirable event, but the liberal media did the Olympics as a significant event for further peace promotion. Fourth, the conservative media’s framings did not considerably influence upon the public opinion. As a conclusion, the public are no longer passive recipients of the messages from the media. Instead, they tend to selectively accept the information from the media based on ‘collective intelligence’. This trend provides a significant implication for enhancing the sustainability of the media environment in South Korea.

scholarly journals Mediernes formidling af meningsmålinger: Indholdsanalyse af folketingsvalg, 2005-2011

Politik ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Gahner Larsen ◽  
Simon Grundt Straubinger
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
News Media ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Systematic Deviation ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
The Media ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls ◽  
Over Time

This article examines the information the Danish news media provide when reporting public opinion polls. e study has been done through quantitative content analysis of 424 newspaper and Internet articles from four major Danish dailies during the last three parliamentary elections. e study found that only about half of the seven ESOMAR/WAPOR-requirements included here were reported. e results from the estimated regression show that the media in general provides more methodological information in newspaper articles than on the Internet, and that the media becomes better at reporting public opinion polls over time. Com- pared with studies conducted in other countries we nd no systematic deviation in how public opinion polls are reported in Denmark. 

Toward a Critical Understanding of News Media, Public Opinion, and the Politics of Economic Inequality

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-49
Author(s):  
Matt Guardino
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
News Media ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Welfare Policy ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Media ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Material Power

This chapter sets the conceptual and historical context of the argument and describes patterns of U.S. public opinion that the book seeks to explain. It situates the book’s argument within scholarship on the politics of economic inequality, public opinion, news framing of policy debates, and the political economy of the media. The chapter also develops a new theory of media dynamics. This theory explains how corporate and governmental influences shaped by media policies filter news coverage of economic and social welfare policy issues. The chapter also summarizes the book’s contribution to empirical research on material power in American politics and to scholarship about the tensions between neoliberalism and democracy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document