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2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Hrckova ◽  
Robert Moro ◽  
Ivan Srba ◽  
Maria Bielikova

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.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Barnidge ◽  
Trevor Diehl ◽  
Lindsey A Sherrill ◽  
Jiehua Zhang

Abstract Scholarship on audience fragmentation typically takes one of two approaches: The micro-level analysis of individuals’ selective exposure to partisan news, or the macro-level analysis of audience overlap. To bridge the gap between these levels of analysis, we introduce the concept of attention centrality as a set of macro-to-micro measures that characterize how individual news media selection is situated within networks of public attention. Relying on an online panel survey conducted in the United States (N = 1,493), we examine the relationship between three indicators of respondents’ attention centrality (closeness, betweenness, and reach) and the partisan valence of their news selections. The study finds different patterns of results for the three indicators of attention centrality, indicating that partisan news media are not uniformly isolated to the periphery of public attention. Results are discussed in light of conversations about selective exposure and audience overlap in the United States and around the world.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Wojcieszak ◽  
Sjifra Edith de Leeuw ◽  
Ericka Menchen-Trevino ◽  
Seungsu Lee ◽  
Ke Maddie Huang-Isherwood ◽  
...  

Many blame partisan news media for polarization in America. This paper examines the effects of liberal, conservative, and centrist news on affective and attitude polarization. To this end, we rely on two studies that combine two-wave panel surveys (N1 = 303, N2 = 904) with 12 months worth of web browsing data submitted by the same participants comprising roughly 38 million visits. We identify news exposure using an extensive list of news domains and develop a machine learning classifier to identify exposure to political news within these domains. The results offer a robust pattern of null findings. Exposure to partisan and centrist news websites – no matter if it is congenial or cross-cutting – does not enhance polarization. These null effects also emerge among strong and weak partisans as well as Democrats and Republicans alike. We argue that these null results accurately portray the reality of limited effects of news in the “real world.” Politics and partisan news account for a small fraction of citizens’ online activities, less than 2% in our trace data, and are nearly unnoticeable in the overall information and communication ecology of most individuals.


Author(s):  
Kathleen Searles ◽  
Joshua P. Darr ◽  
Mingxiao Sui ◽  
Nathan Kalmoe ◽  
Raymond Pingree ◽  
...  

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Sandeep Purao ◽  
David M. Murungi ◽  
David Yates

This article examines breakdowns that occur when readers at partisan news websites attempt to understand a challenging news event. We conduct the work with the 2017 Alabama senate race as the empirical context marked by the nomination of Republican Roy Moore (a challenging news event for the left-leaning readers), and the story of his alleged sexual misconduct (a challenging news event for the right-leaning readers). To examine how readers attempt to understand these events, we scrape reader comments from two partisan news websites. Our analysis relies on and further elaborates the social representation theory and argumentation theory to identify obstacles that prevent successful progression of social representation processes: rhetorical, epistemological, and emotional breakdowns. The findings from our data reveal indicators of rhetorical breakdowns (greater occurrence of fallacious and non-argumentative reader comments) and epistemological breakdowns (greater use of doxastic comments) both tied to how challenging the news event is as well as indicators of emotional breakdowns (greater occurrence of attack posture) tied to the emotionally charged nature of the news event. We interpret the findings as a balancing act between protecting pre-existing representations and acknowledging the challenging news event. The indicators of potential breakdowns we find enhance our understanding of partisan political discourse viewed through the lens of social representation processes. The article discusses these contributions, including elaborations to social representation theory, and discusses implications of the work.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174276652110099
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Urman ◽  
Mykola Makhortykh

The paper examines ideological segregation among Ukrainian users in online environments, using as a case study partisan news communities on Vkontakte, the largest online platform in post-communist states. Its findings suggest that despite their insignificant numbers, partisan news communities attract substantial attention from Ukrainian users and can encourage the formation of isolated ideological cliques – or ‘echo chambers’ – that increase societal polarisation. The paper also investigates factors that predict users’ interest in partisan content and establishes that the region of residence is the key predictor of selective consumption of pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian partisan news content.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (14) ◽  
pp. e2013464118
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Guess ◽  
Pablo Barberá ◽  
Simon Munzert ◽  
JungHwan Yang

What role do ideologically extreme media play in the polarization of society? Here we report results from a randomized longitudinal field experiment embedded in a nationally representative online panel survey (N = 1,037) in which participants were incentivized to change their browser default settings and social media following patterns, boosting the likelihood of encountering news with either a left-leaning (HuffPost) or right-leaning (Fox News) slant during the 2018 US midterm election campaign. Data on ≈ 19 million web visits by respondents indicate that resulting changes in news consumption persisted for at least 8 wk. Greater exposure to partisan news can cause immediate but short-lived increases in website visits and knowledge of recent events. After adjusting for multiple comparisons, however, we find little evidence of a direct impact on opinions or affect. Still, results from later survey waves suggest that both treatments produce a lasting and meaningful decrease in trust in the mainstream media up to 1 y later. Consistent with the minimal-effects tradition, direct consequences of online partisan media are limited, although our findings raise questions about the possibility of subtle, cumulative dynamics. The combination of experimentation and computational social science techniques illustrates a powerful approach for studying the long-term consequences of exposure to partisan news.


Author(s):  
ERIK PETERSON ◽  
ALI KAGALWALA

Partisans hold unfavorable views of media they associate with the other party. They also avoid out-party news sources. We link these developments and argue that partisans assess out-party media based on negative and inaccurate stereotypes. This means cross-cutting exposure that challenges these misperceptions can improve assessments of out-party media. To support this argument, we use survey-linked web browsing data to show that the public has hostile views of out-party news sources they rarely encounter. We conduct three survey experiments that demonstrate cross-cutting exposure to nonpolitical or neutral political stories, forms of news widely available from online partisan sources, reduces oppositional media hostility. This explains how perceptions of rampant bias from out-party media coexist with more modest differences in the online content of major partisan news outlets. More broadly, we illustrate how negative misperceptions can sustain animus towards an out-group when people avoid encounters with them.


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