scholarly journals Conservatives’ susceptibility to political misperceptions

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (23) ◽  
pp. eabf1234
Author(s):  
R. Kelly Garrett ◽  
Robert M. Bond
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Information Environment ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Lower Sensitivity ◽  
Performance Gap ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Longitudinal Dataset

The idea that U.S. conservatives are uniquely likely to hold misperceptions is widespread but has not been systematically assessed. Research has focused on beliefs about narrow sets of claims never intended to capture the richness of the political information environment. Furthermore, factors contributing to this performance gap remain unclear. We generated an unique longitudinal dataset combining social media engagement data and a 12-wave panel study of Americans’ political knowledge about high-profile news over 6 months. Results confirm that conservatives have lower sensitivity than liberals, performing worse at distinguishing truths and falsehoods. This is partially explained by the fact that the most widely shared falsehoods tend to promote conservative positions, while corresponding truths typically favor liberals. The problem is exacerbated by liberals’ tendency to experience bigger improvements in sensitivity than conservatives as the proportion of partisan news increases. These results underscore the importance of reducing the supply of right-leaning misinformation.

Political Knowledge and Misinformation in the Era of Social Media: Evidence From the 2015 UK Election

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Kevin Munger ◽  
Patrick J. Egan ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Jonathan Ronen ◽  
Joshua Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Media Platform

Abstract Does social media educate voters, or mislead them? This study measures changes in political knowledge among a panel of voters surveyed during the 2015 UK general election campaign while monitoring the political information to which they were exposed on the Twitter social media platform. The study's panel design permits identification of the effect of information exposure on changes in political knowledge. Twitter use led to higher levels of knowledge about politics and public affairs, as information from news media improved knowledge of politically relevant facts, and messages sent by political parties increased knowledge of party platforms. But in a troubling demonstration of campaigns' ability to manipulate knowledge, messages from the parties also shifted voters' assessments of the economy and immigration in directions favorable to the parties' platforms, leaving some voters with beliefs further from the truth at the end of the campaign than they were at its beginning.

scholarly journals Sharing and Commenting Facilitate Political Learning on Facebook: Evidence From a Two-Wave Panel Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512110478
Author(s):  
Dam Hee Kim ◽  
Brian E. Weeks ◽  
Daniel S. Lane ◽  
Lauren B. Hahn ◽  
Nojin Kwak
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Mediation Model ◽  
Political Learning ◽  
Political News

Social media, as sources of political news and sites of political discussion, may be novel environments for political learning. Many early reports, however, failed to find that social media use promotes gains in political knowledge. Prior research has not yet fully explored the possibility based on the communication mediation model that exposure to political information on social media facilitates political expression, which may subsequently encourage political learning. We find support for this mediation model in the context of Facebook by analyzing a two-wave survey prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In particular, sharing and commenting, not liking or opinion posting, may facilitate political knowledge gains.

scholarly journals THE POLITICAL INFORMATION TO PROTEST: AN ASSESSMENT OF TOPICAL SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE IN CONTENTIOUS POLITICS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Mercea
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
Prominent Component ◽  
The Social

This article leverages social media and survey data to probe the scope and depth of political knowledge possessed by participants in the Romanian 2017 #rezist protests. For several months, demonstrators gathered in town squares around the country to oppose a project law intended to water down penalties for corruption in high office. Against the backdrop of well-founded scepticism regarding exposure to and engagement with political knowledge on social media, we scrutinize the social media usage of protestors with an interest in the formulation and circulation of political knowledge. We find evidence of applied political knowledge as a prominent component of public activist communication on Facebook. An examination of the network structure further revealed bottlenecks in the circulation and brokerage of knowledge, a result that helps qualify the aforementioned scepticism.

scholarly journals Are public service media distinctive from the market? Interpreting the political information environments of BBC and commercial news in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110121
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Television News ◽  
Information Environment ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Market Driven

Public service media face an existential crisis. Many governments are cutting their budgets, while questioning the role and value of public service broadcasting because many citizens now have access to a wide range of media. This raises the question – do public service media supply a distinctive and informative news service compared to market-led media? Drawing on the concept of political information environment, this study makes an intervention into debates by carrying out a comparative content analysis of news produced by UK public service broadcasters and market-driven media across television, radio and online outlets (N = 1065) and interviewing senior editors about the routine selection of news. It found that almost all BBC news and commercial public service media platforms reported more news about politics, public affairs and international issues than entirely market-driven outlets. Online BBC news reported more informative topics than market-based media, which featured more entertainment and celebrity stories. The value of public service media was demonstrated on the United Kingdom’s nightly television news bulletins, which shone a light on the world not often reported, especially BBC News at Ten. Most market-driven media reported through a UK prism, excluding many countries and international issues. Overall, it is argued that the influence of public service media in the United Kingdom helps shape an information environment with informative news. The focus of the study is on UK media, but the conceptual application of intepreting a political information environment is designed to be relevant for scholars internationally. While communication studies have sought to advance more cross-national studies in recent years, this can limit how relevant studies are for debates in national political information environments. This study concludes by recommending more scholarly attention should be paid to theorising national policy dynamics that shape the political information environments of media systems within nations.

Outrage and Satire as Responses and Antidotes

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-68
Author(s):  
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Information Environment ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ideological Bias ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Face ◽  
New Media Technologies

This chapter illustrates how conservative outrage programming and liberal satire were articulated as reactions to perceived problematic aspects of the political information environment in the 1990s. Both genres were fueled by the political polarization and media distrust that had exploded in the last third of the twentieth century. And both genres were made possible by new media technologies of the late 1990s. In the face of political polarization and a reduction of trust in journalism, conservative talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh and Fox News’s Roger Ailes created programming to deconstruct the ideological bias they perceived in mainstream news. Meanwhile, comedians worked to deconstruct the bias that they saw in the profit-driven news of that era; not an ideological bias but a bias in favor of strategy, spin, and partisan jargon.

scholarly journals Does incidental exposure on social media equalize or reinforce participatory gaps? Evidence from a panel study

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 2463-2482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raffael Heiss ◽  
Jörg Matthes
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Incidental Exposure ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Using Data ◽  
High Effort

Existing research indicates that incidental exposure to political information on social media may function as an equalizer, stimulating political engagement among the politically detached. In this article, we challenge this notion and propose that there are good reasons to assume that incidental exposure may reinforce existing gaps. We test the equalizing against the reinforcing hypothesis using data from a two-wave panel study ( N = 559). We find a positive main effect of incidental exposure on low-effort digital participation. However, this effect was not conditional on political interest, as the equalizing assumption would have suggested. More interestingly, we found that the effect of incidental exposure on high-effort digital participation was conditional on political interest. However, against the assumption of equalization, individuals with low levels of political interest were negatively affected by incidental exposure, thus lending support for the reinforcement hypothesis. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

MASS MEDIA IN THE SYSTEM OF FORMATION OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE AND YOUTH ORIENTATION IN THE CONDITIONS OF MEDIATIZATION OF THE SOCIETY

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 95-99
Author(s):  
Бударина ◽  
Kseniya Budarina
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Knowledge And Attitudes ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject

The article examines the media´s ability to influence the process of forming political and civic culture of Russian youth. The author revealed the essence of the institute of the media and identified the main functional characteristics of the subject of the political process. The transformation of political values of the Russian youth is substantiated, as well as the instability of its political views in terms of mediatization and development of social media is considered. The priority of media activities is specified that affects the formation of political knowledge and attitudes of young people.

scholarly journals The uncertain first-time voter: Effects of political media exposure on young citizens’ formation of vote choice in a digital media environment

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 3243-3265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Ohme ◽  
Claes H. de Vreese ◽  
Erik Albaek
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Media Exposure ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
News Sources ◽  
First Time

The digital media environment changes the way citizens receive political information, also during an election campaign. Particularly first-time voters increasingly use social media platforms as news sources. Yet, it is less clear how accessing political information in such a unique social setting affects these cohorts’ decision-making processes during an election campaign, compared to experienced voters. We compare effects of these two groups’ political information exposure on their vote choice certainty during the 2015 Danish national election. We furthermore test how the relation between exposure and certainty can be mediated by active campaign participation. An 11-wave national panel study was conducted, using a smartphone-based assessment of citizens’ ( n = 1108) media exposure and vote choice certainty across the campaign period. Results suggest that first-time voters’ social media exposure is responsible for their increase in certainty as the campaign progresses, while this effect is absent for experienced voters.

scholarly journals Processing news on social media. The political incidental news exposure model (PINE)

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 1031-1048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Matthes ◽  
Andreas Nanz ◽  
Marlis Stubenvoll ◽  
Raffael Heiss
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Exposure Model ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political News ◽  
Political Outcome ◽  
Intensive Processing

This article outlines the Political Incidental News Exposure Model. The Political Incidental News Exposure Model understands incidental news exposure as a dynamic process and distinguishes two levels of incidental news exposure: the passive scanning of incidentally encountered political information (first level) and the intentional processing of incidentally encountered content appraised as relevant (second level). After encountering political information incidentally, recipients briefly check the content for relevance (i.e., first level). If content is appraised as relevant, recipients switch to more intensive processing (i.e., second level incidental news exposure). Importantly, second-level incidental news exposure is assumed to have stronger effects on political outcome variables like participation and knowledge than first-level incidental news exposure. The Political Incidental News Exposure Model further acknowledges intention-based (i.e., incidental news exposure while not looking for political news) and topic-based incidental news exposure (i.e., incidental news exposure while looking for other political news) and it conceptualizes incidental news exposure with respect to political and non-political content. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Social media, porous boundaries, and the development of online political engagement among young citizens

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 740-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Ekström ◽  
Adam Shehata
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Motivation Factors ◽  
Information Interaction ◽  
Porous Boundaries

Concepts such as “porous boundaries” and “low thresholds” appear frequently in the literature on online political engagement. Social media, it is argued, are characterized by less distinct boundaries between non-political and political activities, thereby lowering thresholds into political engagement. This argument is analyzed and empirically tested. Relying on a five-wave panel study among Swedish adolescents, we provide unique insights into the levels and development of political engagement in online political information, interaction, production, and collective action. In sum, the findings show that, for a majority, social interaction in social media coincides with engagement in political information and interaction, while few are engaged in production and collective action. Second, the study provides limited support to the idea that low thresholds in social media promote patterns of tune-in, tune-out political engagement over time. Finally, social interaction in social media has clear effects on online political engagement beyond political socialization and motivation factors.

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