U.S. Public Opinion on China and the United States During the U.S.–China Trade Dispute: The Role of Audience Framing and Partisan Media Use

This study examines the relationship between selective and cross-cutting/non-partisan media exposure, perceived journalism framing, and U.S. public’s perception of China and the United States during the U.S.–China trade dispute. A national survey of U.S. adult population indicated that more people perceived that the media escalated the conflict between China and the United States than promoted peace between the countries. Perceived peace journalism framing was positively related to perception of China, whereas perceived war journalism framing was positively related to perception of the United States. Partisan media use has higher influence on perception of the United States than perception of China.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of linking patterns of mainstream and partisan online news media in Central Europe

PurposePartisan news media, which often publish extremely biased, one-sided or even false news, are gaining popularity world-wide and represent a major societal issue. Due to a growing number of such media, a need for automatic detection approaches is of high demand. Automatic detection relies on various indicators (e.g. content characteristics) to identify new partisan media candidates and to predict their level of partisanship. The aim of the research is to investigate to a deeper extent whether it would be appropriate to rely on the hyperlinks as possible indicators for better automatic partisan news media detection.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilized hyperlink network analysis to study the hyperlinks of partisan and mainstream media. The dataset involved the hyperlinks of 18 mainstream media and 15 partisan media in Slovakia and Czech Republic. More than 171 million domain pairs of inbound and outbound hyperlinks of selected online news media were collected with Ahrefs tool, analyzed and visualized with Gephi software. Additionally, 300 articles covering COVID-19 from both types of media were selected for content analysis of hyperlinks to verify the reliability of quantitative analysis and to provide more detailed analysis.FindingsThe authors conclude that hyperlinks are reliable indicators of media affinity and linking patterns could contribute to partisan news detection. The authors found out that especially the incoming links with dofollow attribute to news websites are reliable indicators for assessing the type of media, as partisan media rarely receive links with dofollow attribute from mainstream media. The outgoing links are not such reliable indicators as both mainstream and partisan media link to mainstream sources similarly.Originality/valueIn contrast to the extensive amount of research aiming at fake news detection within a piece of text or multimedia content (e.g. news articles, social media posts), the authors shift to characterization of the whole news media. In addition, the authors did a geographical shift from more researched US-based media to so far under-researched European context, particularly Central Europe. The results and conclusions can serve as a guide how to derive new features for an automatic detection of possibly partisan news media by means of artificial intelligence (AI).Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at the following link: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2020-0441.

The Ties that Blind: Misperceptions of the Opponent Fringe and the Miscalibration of Political Contempt

Americans’ hostility toward political opponents has intensified to a degree not fully explained by actual ideological polarization. We propose that political animosity may be based particularly on partisans’ overestimation of the prevalence of extreme, egregious views held by only a minority of opponents but imagined to be widespread. Across five studies (N= 4993; three preregistered), we examine issue extremity as an antecedent of false polarization. Both liberals and conservatives report high agreement with their party’s moderate issues but low agreement with the extreme issues associated with their side. As expected, false polarization did not occur for all issues. Partisans were fairly accurate in estimating opponents’ moderate issues (even underestimating agreement somewhat). In contrast, partisans consistently overestimated the prevalence of their opponents’ extreme, egregious political attitudes. (Over)estimation of political opponents’ agreement with extreme issues predicted cross-partisan dislike, which in turn predicted unwillingness to engage with opponents, foreclosing opportunities to correct misperceptions (Studies 2-4b). Participants explicitly attributed their dislike of political opponents to opponents’ views on extreme issues more than moderate issues (Study 3). Partisans also reported greater unwillingness to publicly voice their views on their side’s extreme (relative to moderate) issues, a self-silencing which may perpetuate misconceptions (Studies 1, 2, 4a&b). Time spent watching partisan media (controlling political orientation) predicted greater overestimations of the prevalence of extreme views (Studies 2, 4a&b). Salience of opponents’ malevolence mattered: first reflecting on opponents’ (presumed nefarious) election tactics made partisans on both sides subsequently more accepting of unfair tactics from their own side (Studies 4a&b).

The Influence of Partisan Media in the Face of Global Pandemic: How News Media Influenced COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy

While vaccination against COVID-19 represents a clear path toward resuming “normal life,” attitudes toward vaccination and vaccine uptake has been highly politically contentious. In this paper, we investigate (1) whether or not partisan news outlets covered COVID-vaccination issues in different ways, and (2) whether differences in coverage contributed to the vaccine politicization. We do this by bringing together novel sentiment-scored COVID vaccine stories (N > 17,000) from cable and mainstream news outlets, N > 180,000 vaccine adverse event reports to the Dept. of Health and Human Services (which we validate both here and in past research as a proxy for public vaccine sentiment), and six original surveys (N = 6,499) measuring vaccination intentions and media use behavior throughout the pandemic. We find that Fox News’ vaccine-related coverage was significantly more negative than that of other cable and mainstream sources. Critically, these differences in tone influenced public opinion about vaccines. Adverse event reports tended to increase following heightened periods of negativity on Fox News, which robustness checks suggest is not likely to be a reverse causal effect. Correspondingly, self-reported Fox News exposure in the opinion data is associated with elevated levels of vaccine hesitancy throughout the pandemic. Collectively, the results provide new insights into the persuasive power of partisan media. While some might expect the promise of ending a global pandemic to interrupt conventional media effect processes, we find that differences in covered vaccine-related issues had both predictable and polarizing effects on public opinion.

THE DISINFECTANT DIVERSION: FRAMING STRATEGIES OF PARTISAN MEDIA IN INTERPRETING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Following the rise of Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 US presidential election, political communication scholars have turned a critical eye towards the role of conservative media outlets in the construction of an overarching meta-narrative, largely referred to in the existing literature as the “deep story” (Hochschild, 2016). The aim of the present study to extend this seminal work to analyze how mainstream, conservative, and liberal outlets rely on meta-narratives to construct meaning in their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing qualitative methods, we analyze the coverage that six American news outlets afforded the April 23rd 2020 Coronavirus Task Force news briefing, where President Trump insinuated injections of disinfectant could be a useful way to fight COVID-19. Our analysis includes 115 news articles, 41 Facebook posts and 87 television clips from these outlets. Our results reveal that both the left and right wing media systems employed overarching narratives in their coverage. The left-wing media heavily emphasized the tendency to deny or argue scientific fact among conservatives. In contrast, we observed that the right-wing media constantly used similar framing strategies in an attempt to vilify the left-wing media and liberals. Considering the existing literature (Kreiss, 2018: Poletta & Callahan, 2019), we observed many instances where right-wing pundits and journalists relied on previously established heuristics, cuing audiences to perceive the left-wing media as elitist out to discredit Trump. Our findings provide an in-depth analysis of how partisan media relies on meta-narratives to convey meaning to their audiences.

Partisan media, untrustworthy news sites, and political misperceptions

This study investigates the potential role both untrustworthy and partisan websites play in misinforming audiences by testing whether actual exposure to these sites is associated with political misperceptions. Using a sample of American adult social media users, we match data from individuals’ Internet browser histories with a survey measuring the accuracy of political beliefs. We find that visits to partisan websites are at times related to misperceptions consistent with the political bias of the site. However, we do not find strong evidence that untrustworthy websites consistently relate to false beliefs. There is also little evidence that visits to less partisan, centrist news sites are associated with more accurate political beliefs about these issues, suggesting that exposure to politically neutral news is not necessarily the antidote to misinformation. Results suggest that focusing on partisan news sites—rather than untrustworthy sites—may be fruitful to understanding how media contribute to political misperceptions.

New Venezuela talks bring hope of gradual progress

Significance Norwegian-led dialogue efforts are an opportunity for Maduro and Guaido to navigate the lifting of devastating US economic sanctions and a long-term electoral opening. Impacts Broader involvement including civil society groups would help overcome acute polarity and improve ‘buy in’ to any potential agreement. The new US government will strengthen Venezuelan opposition groups that emphasise electoral participation over abstention and regime change. Norway will aim to shield the talks from the leaks, irreconcilable demands and partisan media mobilisation that eroded previous processes.

Partisan media effects beyond one-shot experimental designs

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.