Abstract
One recent and conspicuous change in the U.S. media landscape has been the shift toward more markedly partisan news content. At the same time, data suggest that the media audience has become more polarized across a wide array of controversial and politicized issues. Recruiting from a group of highly polarized opponents of childhood vaccinations, this study employed a 3 (content bias) × 2 (partisan vs. neutral participants) × 2 (information source) experimental design to examine audience perceptions of information bias. The data supported an expected hostile media perception in the case of "fair and balanced" information, but different patterns in the other bias conditions suggest that content variables can sometimes disarm defensive processing.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 439-457 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Communication Research |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2012 |
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was supported in part by grants from the UW Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars program and the UW Graduate School to the first author.
Keywords
- contrast effects
- hostile media effect
- partisan media
- partisanship
- vaccinations
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language
