Lecture 6 Flashcards
hyperpartisan news Benkler et al 2017 (cited in Wischnewski et al., 2021):
sites that revive what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” combining decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world
Hyperpartisan news SemEval-2019:
Hyperpartisan news is news that takes an extreme left-wing or right-wing standpoint.
Hyperpartisan news Rae (2021):
In offering a definition: hyperpartisan news has emerged as a distinct, digital-first subculture of media. It departs from journalism’s traditional notions of objectivity, is transgressive in style, openly ideological, extremely biased in favour of a political leader and attacks the other side’s point of view, often at the expense of facts. These news outlets have capitalised on the architectures of powerful algorithmic and data-driven intermediaries, such as Facebook, providing content that allow everyday people to serve as distributors. [.. but are these sites news?]
How can media change our mind:
How can media change our mind:
- Agenda setting
- Priming
- Framing
- Learning and Cultivation
Agenda setting
the media cannot decide what you think,
but they can decide what you think about”
People generally think that issues covered in the media
are the issues that are important
Transfer of salience from media agenda to public agenda
Related: Agenda building from political agenda to public agenda
(confusingly also called agenda setting in political science)
McCombs & Shaw (1972), Barbera et al (2019)
Priming
Psychology: issues that are primed are more accessible
Communication: considerations that are primed play a larger role in attitudes
Attitude as weighted sum of beliefs (A=Σvi·wi);
beliefs hard to change, but weight can be changed by priming
Highly similar to 2nd level agenda setting / salience of issue/candidate attributes
E.g. Chong & Druckman 2007, Scheufele & Tewksbury 2007
Framing
“Interpretative theme” used to tell a story, “sense making device”
“Fractured paradigm”: many definitions of what frames are
–> Entman, episodic vs thematic, generic vs issue frames, emphasis vs equivalence,
game frames, conflict/human interest, ….
Framing experiments find some direct effects,
but harder when exposed to competing frames
Learning and Cultivation
People learn a lot from the media
Soft news / infotainment can (also) be very effective for learning
Cultivation theory: people learn norms from media
(and hence, learn stereotypes)
Knowledge gap theory: people that know most learn more
The problem with media effects
- Most people are not (that) interested in (most) political news
- Heuristic rather than cognitive processing (e.g. ELM)
- Views hard to change (but issues/considerations can be made salient)
- People often have strong habits / preferences regarding politics
- Media often have competing frames (in one or more messages)
- Confirmation bias: people reject attitude-incongruent message
When can media persuade? (1)
Zaller: Receive, accept, sample
Curvilinear relation:
- Uninterested people don’t receive the message, or can’t process it
- People with a strong preference won’t accept the message
- Media effects strongest in the middle
- When forming rather than changing opinion,
i. e. new (or newly contested) issues
Media effects are unintended and unnoticed
Explicit persuasion often resisted
- -> Ideological messages only accepted when you already agree (=reinforcement)
- -> Counter-attitudinal messages (and sources) rejected (confirmation bias)
Strongest media effects are implicit rather than explicit persuasion
- -> Agenda setting
- -> Cultivation
- -> Learning
Effects are strong where messages are not contested
- -> Cultural rather than ideological bias
- -> Representative deviance
- -> Preserving the status quo / propaganda model
Media effects are unintended and unnoticed
Explicit persuasion often resisted
- -> Ideological messages only accepted when you already agree (=reinforcement)
- -> Counter-attitudinal messages (and sources) rejected (confirmation bias)
Strongest media effects are implicit rather than explicit persuasion
- -> Agenda setting
- -> Cultivation
- -> Learning
Effects are strong where messages are not contested
- -> Cultural rather than ideological bias
- -> Representative deviance
- -> Preserving the status quo / propaganda model
A brief history of media effects
Propaganda fears / “hypodermic needle”
Minimal effects / two-step flow
→ strong social ties, weaker media
Stronger (Heuristic) effects: agenda setting / framing / priming
→ Individualization, media saturation (mediatization)
What is the effect of social/digital media, media fragmentation?
Selective exposure and audience fragmentation
Fragmentation of the media landscape
–> from (relatively homogenous) “national news” on TV / selected newspapers
to mainstream, niche, social, algorithmic, … news
–> (cf. Van Aelst et al, 2017, next week)
Selective exposure: people consume media that match their interest
No longer ‘stumbling upon’ news?
Most people don’t seek out (political) news
Inadvertent audience: people that ‘stumble upon’ news while consuming media for another purpose
Consequences:
Fewer (low-interested) people consume political news
Increased knowledge (and interest/trust?) gap
Partisan selective exposure
People that do seek out political news often have strong preference
People prefer attitude-congruent information (Confirmation bias)
→ Selectively expose themselves to news that matches their preferences
News algorithms reinforces selective exposure
(personalization, social media timelines)
→ Self selected or algorithmic filter bubbles (week 5)
A new era of minimal effects
Mass media effects (e.g. agenda setting) rely on a (homogenous) mass media
Fragmented media allows for selective exposure
Uninterested citizens select away from political news
Interested citizens select into attitude-congruent news
Attitude formation and reinforcement are important effects
Political information is broader than just news
(e.g. satirical shows, also political ads/viral videos?)
Selective exposure / filter bubbles overstated (see week 5)
Technology not deterministic
→ Focus more on psychological theories of processing (e.g. ELM/HSM),
be careful with superficial normative arguments
