scholarly journals Testing popular news discourse on the “echo chamber” effect: Does political polarisation occur among those relying on social media as their primary politics news source?

First Monday ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
An Nguyen ◽  
Hong Tien Vu
Keyword(s):  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Political News ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
News Source ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes ◽  
Chamber Effect

Since 2016, online social networks (OSNs), especially their “big data” algorithms, have been intensively blamed in popular news discourse for acting as echo chambers. These chambers entrap like-minded voters in closed ideological circles that cause serious damage to democratic processes. This study examines this “echo chamber” argument through the rather divisive case of EU politics among EU citizens. Based on an exploratory secondary analysis of the Eurobarometer 86.2 survey dataset, we investigate whether the reliance on OSNs as a primary EU political news source can lead people to more polarisation in EU-related political beliefs and attitudes than a reliance on traditional media. We found little evidence for this polarisation, lending credence to a rejection of social media’s “echo chamber” effect.

scholarly journals Discussion Network Activation: An Expanded Approach to Selective Exposure

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 32-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Political News ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Network Activation ◽  
Information Exposure

Studies of selective exposure have focused on use of traditional media sources. However, discussion networks are an integral part of individuals’ information diets. This article extends the selective exposure literature by exploring the potential for networks to likewise be selectively accessed. A pre-registered experiment found that participants nominate denser, more ideologically coherent networks in response to congenial political news relative to uncongenial news, and express willingness to share it with more people. Analysis of open-ended data suggest shared political beliefs are more likely to motivate discussant selection in response to congenial, rather than uncongenial, news. Properties of networks generated in response to political and non-political news did not vary. These results provide nuance to our understanding of political information exposure.

scholarly journals Optimal Dynamic Allocation of Attention

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (8) ◽  
pp. 2993-3029 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeon-Koo Che ◽  
Konrad Mierendorff
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Dynamic Allocation ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Source ◽  
Current Belief ◽  
Optimal Dynamic ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Chamber Effect

We consider a decision maker (DM) who, before taking an action, seeks information by allocating her limited attention dynamically over different news sources that are biased toward alternative actions. Endogenous choice of information generates rich dynamics: the chosen news source either reinforces or weakens the prior, shaping subsequent attention choices, belief updating, and the final action. The DM adopts a learning strategy biased toward the current belief when the belief is extreme and against that belief when it is moderate. Applied to consumption of news media, observed behavior exhibits an “ echo-chamber” effect for partisan voters and a novel “ anti-echo-chamber” effect for moderates. (JEL D72, D83, D91, L82)

Social Media Engagement With Strategy- and Issue-Framed Political News

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (5) ◽  
pp. 443-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Jomini Stroud ◽  
Ashley Muddiman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Past Research ◽  
News Article ◽  
Significant Heterogeneity ◽  
News Frames ◽  
Political News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Issue Frames ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

Abstract Issue and strategy frames, oft-used ways of conveying political news, affect people’s political beliefs and attitudes, with strategic news frames producing greater cynicism and distrust than issue frames. Although some past research suggests that audiences prefer strategically framed news, it is not clear whether the public gravitates toward issue or strategy frames on social media. We partnered with a national news organization to conduct 48 tests of whether people more frequently clicked on, commented on, or reacted to strategy- or issue-based news. On Facebook, people were randomly shown different versions of posts about a news article, resulting in 967,260 impressions. Using meta-analytic techniques, we found significant heterogeneity across the tests. Overall, however, strategy-based news yielded more clicks, whereas issue-based news yielded more comments and reactions. The results were not moderated by whether the test mentioned a salient issue or the number of days until the election.

scholarly journals Credibility of Digital Political News in Spain: Comparison between Traditional Media and Social Media

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 170
Author(s):  
Reinald Besalú ◽  
Carles Pont-Sorribes
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Item ◽  
Digital Television ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Political News ◽  
Digital News ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Digital Formats

In the context of the dissemination of fake news and the traditional media outlets’ loss of centrality, the credibility of digital news emerges as a key factor for today’s democracies. The main goal of this paper was to identify the levels of credibility that Spanish citizens assign to political news in the online environment. A national survey (n = 1669) was designed to assess how the news format affected credibility and likelihood of sharing. Four different news formats were assessed, two of them linked to traditional media (digital newspapers and digital television) and two to social media (Facebook and WhatsApp). Four experimental groups assigned a credibility score and a likelihood of sharing score to four different political news items presented in the aforementioned digital formats. The comparison between the mean credibility scores assigned to the same news item presented in different formats showed significant differences among groups, as did the likelihood of sharing the news. News items shown in a traditional media format, especially digital television, were assigned more credibility than news presented in a social media format, and participants were also more likely to share the former, revealing a more cautious attitude towards social media as a source of news.

scholarly journals A Study of a Sample of Facebook Users Finds They Do Not Seek Political News through Facebook But Are Exposed to Political News through This Medium

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-38
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Margaret Stovold
Keyword(s):  
Online Survey ◽  
Online News ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Political News ◽  
High School Degree ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Source ◽  
Tv News ◽  
The Mean

A Review of: Schaferm, S., Sulflow, M., & Muller, P. (2017). The special taste of snack news: an application of niche theory to understand the appeal of Facebook as a source for political news. First Monday, 22(4-3). http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v22i4.7431 Abstract Objective – To investigate Facebook as a source of exposure to political news stories and to compare the reasons for using Facebook as a news source and the gratifications obtained, compared with other news sources. Design – Survey questionnaire. Setting – Facebook. Subjects – 422 German Facebook users. Methods – An online survey was developed to investigate the use of Facebook as a news source compared with other sources. Specific research questions were informed by the ‘theory of niche’ (Dimmick, 2003) which examines the coexistence and competition between different media outlets by examining the breadth, overlap and superiority of one platform over another. The survey was distributed using a ‘snowball’ technique between July and August 2015. The survey was shared by 52 student research assistants on their Facebook profiles. They asked their friends to complete the survey and share it with their own networks. Main results – The mean (M) age of the 422 respondents was 23.5 years (SD=8.25). The majority were female (61%) with a high school degree (89%). TV news and news websites were the most frequently used sources of political news. Facebook ranked third, ahead of newspapers, search engines, magazines, email provider websites, and Twitter. The mean score for the importance of Facebook as a news sources was 2.46 (SD=1.13) on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is low and 5 is high. This fell in the middle of the range when compared with the top ranked source assessed by importance (TV news, M 4.40, SD=0.88) and the lowest (email providers, M 1.92, SD=0.97). Users rarely visited Facebook with the purpose of finding news (M 1.59, SD=0.73). However, they estimated around 24% of the posts they see were concerned with political news, and when encountered, these stories are frequently read (M 3.53, SD=1.18). However, the level of interaction as measured by liking, commenting, sharing or status updates was low (M 1.94 SD=1.09; M 1.37, SD=0.79; M 1.51, SD=0.85 and M 1.4, SD=0.78 respectively). The ‘gratification’ categories where Facebook as a news source scored the highest were for killing time (M 2.97, SD=1.29), entertainment (M 2.92, SD=1.05), and surveillance (M 2.77, SD=1.01). When compared to newspapers and TV news, it was found that Facebook has a lower score for niche breadth, meaning that it serves a specific rather than general news function. Facebook also had a lower overlap score when compared with the other media, thereby performing a complementary function, while TV news and newspapers perform similarly. TV news scored better for providing balanced information, surveillance and social utility while Facebook scored highest for killing time. There was no difference in the category of entertainment. There was a similar picture when comparing Facebook with newspapers. Conclusion – The authors conclude that while users do not actively seek political news through Facebook, they are exposed to political news through this medium. Respondents did not consider the news to be well balanced, and that currently Facebooks’ niche is restricted to entertainment and killing time. The authors note that this may be disappointing for news organisations, but there is potential to expose large audiences to political news when they are not actively seeking it. The findings represent a specific time point in a changing landscape and future research will need to take these changes into account. Comparisons with other online news sources and the use of objective measures to validate self-reported data would be valuable areas for future research.

scholarly journals Political News Discourse Analysis Based on an Attitudinal Perspective of the Appraisal Theory—Taking the New York Times’ Report China-DPRK Relations as an Example

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinxiu Jin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
North Korea ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Appraisal Theory ◽  
Political News ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship among China, the United States and North Korea has already been a focus of international politics. From June 19 to 20, North Korea leader Kim Jong-un ended his third visit to China within 100 days. This is also his three consecutive visits to China since he took office in December 2011. The high density and frequency are not only rare in the history of China-DPRK relations, but also seem to be unique in the history of international relations, indicating that China-DPRK relations are welcoming new era. This paper selects the New York Times’ report on China-DPRK relations as an example, which is based on an attitudinal perspective of the appraisal theory to analyze American attitudes toward China. Attitudes are positive and negative, explicit and implicit. Whether the attitude is good or not depends on the linguistic meaning of expressing attitude. The meaning of language is positive, and the attitude of expression is positive; the meaning of language is negative, and the attitude of expression is negative. The study found that most of the attitude resources are affect (which are always negative affect), which are mainly realized through such means as lexical, syntactical and rhetorical strategies implicitly or explicitly. All these negative evaluations not only help construct a discourse mode for building the bad image of China but also are not good to China-DPRK relations. The United States wants to tarnish image of China and destroy the relationship between China and North Korea by its political news discourse.

scholarly journals VAGUENESS AND DISSOCIATION IN ENGLISH POLITICAL NEWS DISCOURSE

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Katarina Damjanić
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
English Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political News ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Discourse Interpretation ◽  
Newspaper Articles

The main goal of this paper is to indicate the importance of the issues of vagueness and dissociation in discourse interpretation. The discourse that is taken into consideration is the discourse of political news written in the English language. This particular discourse is widely available to readers and deals with important political issues, which is why the choice of words and phrases should ideally be unbiased and accurate. If not, the readers may misinterpret the discourse and have a wrong impression of the political issue. In this research, newspaper articles are taken as an example of political news discourse. All articles analyzed were written in online British and American broadsheet and tabloid newspapers and they all dealt with the migrant crisis and 2019 Hong Kong protests. By taking into consideration the political context and the theoretical framework used in this research, 44 instances considered to be examples of vagueness and dissociation were identified, which were found in 14 newspaper articles.

Why perceived political bias on TV does not inevitably lead to a polarized audience. The case of NRK and TV2 in Norway

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 382-406
Author(s):  
Anders Todal Jenssen ◽  
Toril Aalberg
Keyword(s):  
Political Polarization ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Political Bias ◽  
News Source ◽  
Public Broadcaster ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right

Abstract This paper investigates whether political polarization of the TV audience is emerging also in a typical democratic corporatist system. The study is motivated by the claim put forward by several US scholars, who argue that in today’s high choice information environments, partisans tend to see mainstream media as ‘hostile’ and therefore seek out and select broadcasters who confirm and deepen their worldview (Arceneaux and Johnson, 2013; Iyengar and Hahn, 2009; Tewksbury and Riles, 2015). This demand, they argue, expands the market for partisan TV and contributes to growing political polarization. We ask if there is evidence of a politically polarized Norwegian TV audience, by exploring the relationship between partisan preferences, perceived political bias and selective exposure to TV news. We find that many Norwegians believe that both the public broadcaster and the leading commercial broadcasters are politically biased. Consistent with the “hostile media hypothesis”, people on the right accuse the broadcasters of favoring the parties on the left, whereas people of the left tend to see the broadcasters as favoring the parties on the right, albeit not to the same degree. By using a survey experiment, our study also demonstrates that given the opportunity, the audience does select news stories consistent with their political beliefs from a politically ‘friendly’ broadcaster. However, they also choose news stories consistent with their political beliefs from a perceived hostile news source over politically inconsistent stories from a friendly source. This suggests that ‘friendly’ content triumphs perception of broadcaster bias. Despite widespread perceptions of partisan favoritism in the Norwegian TV market, we find few traces of a politically polarized audience. The main reason for this is that the public broadcaster still draws a wide audience across the political spectrum, as even critics consider this news source as too important and relevant to be ignored.

The Unified Model for Acceptance and Use of Health Information on Online Social Networks

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waransanang Boontarig ◽  
Borworn Papasratorn ◽  
Wichian Chutimaskul
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Unified Model ◽  
Dissemination Strategy ◽  
Facilitating Conditions ◽  
Emotional Value ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

Online social networks provide a novel opportunity to improve public health through effective health information dissemination. Developing a dissemination strategy, however, requires an understanding of individuals' beliefs and attitudes about using both the technology and information. Previous research has focused primarily on either technology adoption or information adoption behaviors. This study aims to bridge the gap by developing a unified model of acceptance and use of information technology for predicting intention to use health information through online social networks. Empirical results show that Performance Expectancy, Facilitating Conditions, Perceived Emotional Value, Trust, Relevance, Accuracy, Understandability, and Source Credibility influence the adoption behavior. Also, individuals tend to accept health information regardless of their attitudes toward the communication channel.

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