Бұқаралық ақпарат құралдарындағы жақтық көзқарас әсері

Theory of mass communication

The hostile media effect, originally deemed the hostile media phenomenon and sometimes called hostile media perception, is a perceptual theory of mass communication that refers to the tendency for individuals with a strong preexisting attitude on an issue to perceive media coverage as biased against their side and in favor of their antagonists' point of view. Partisans from opposite sides of an issue will tend to find the same coverage to be biased against them. The phenomenon was first proposed and studied experimentally by Robert Vallone, Lee Ross and Mark Lepper.

In 1982, the second major study of this phenomenon was undertaken; immigration in the U. S. and in U. S. presidential elections, as well as in other areas, such as media coverage of the South Korean National Security Act, the 1997 United Parcel Service Teamsters strike, genetically modified food, and sports. The effect was originally dubbed "hostile media phenomenon" by Vallone et al., In other words, the intention of the reporter or the story is irrelevant – those "partisans" Princeton and Dartmouth students were shown a filmstrip of a controversial Princeton Dartmouth football game. Asked to count the number of infractions committed by both sides, students at both universities "saw" many more infractions committed by the opposing side, in addition to making different generalizations about the game. Hastorf and Cantril concluded that "there is no such 'thing' as a 'game' existing 'out there' in its own right which people merely 'observe.' For the 'thing' simply is not the same for different people whether the 'thing' is a football game, a presidential candidate, Communism, or spinach."

All of these explanatory mechanisms are influenced by partisanship. From the first studies, the hostile media effect has required an audience of partisans, with stronger beliefs correlating with stronger manifestations of the effect. Gunther et al. said, "the relative hostile media effect occurs when individuals with different attitudes toward the issue exhibit significantly different evaluations of the same media content.”

In fact, as Glass et al. noted in a 2000 study, "partisans tend to see objectively biased articles as 'even handed' if the bias impugns the opposition group." The study measured the responses of voters who support and oppose abortion rights, finding that "people with more extreme views on abortion sometimes evaluate biased news articles as being fair, but only when the opposing side is being gored." The effect appears to exist more among conservatives than liberals, according to multiple studies. When randomly assigned either a clip from Comedy Central's The Daily Show (liberal), or a similar program from Fox News (conservative), conservatives perceived significantly more bias in the program than liberal subjects. participants watched a Media Literacy PSA prior to watching manipulated television programs, then asked to rate their perceptions of the relative hostility of the media afterwards. The effects were strong in some areas but less so in others. "Given that the digital media environment allows individuals to select their own media content – and people tend to choose what they find more credible – in some cases a news media literacy message may spur further selection into agreeable political enclaves, now seen as even more credible, and contribute to rising political polarization" (26). Besides media literacy messages, empathy was introduced to news messages to see whether the emotion can reduce HME. attempted to discern why in some cases research subjects faulted ambiguous, contradictory information, and supported it in other cases. One conclusion they suggested was the reach of the publication – that is, the hostile media effect is likely to emerge when participants are estimating the effects on others of mass media with a large reach, but biased assimilation would occur when the participants are judging media with lower reach (in this case, a research report that presumably reaches only people in a particular field).

Hansen and Kim found that involvement is positively correlated with hostile media effect; that is, the effect increases as individuals become more involved with the issue. The study also found a significant effect that emerged with those who have low involvement. Other studies have found high correlations of the effect in value relevant involvement and in affective involvement.

Social identity theory suggests that media coverage of an ego involving issue will activate group identity and increase the salience of the issue among members of a group that champions a particular political or social cause. This in turn triggers self categorization processes, as ingroup members differentiate themselves from their counterparts in the outgroup, seeking to elevate their self esteem by viewing the ingroup as superior to the disliked outgroup on core dimensions. When exposed to controversial media coverage that contains unfavorable depictions of the ingroup, group members, concerned about the perceived inaccuracy of the portrayals and convinced that the portrayals undermine the group's legitimacy in the larger society, cope by derogating media coverage, viewing it as hostilely biased. In this way, they reduce the symbolic threat and restore valued social self esteem. A related potential moderator is the outgroup membership of the message source. Reid found that more politically extreme Democratic students perceived less bias when a polemical assault on their group was attributed to a Democratic (ingroup) organization, but detected more bias when the attack was ascribed to a pro Republican outgroup.

Perloff contributing to hostile perceptions with Facebook news messages.