Trust in the media

We investigate how partisans in the US perceive neutral coverage of news by outlets opposite to their political leaning as biased and untrustworthy. Current experimental studies on Hostile Media Perception (HMP) do not account for prior beliefs concerning media bias or news content, missing a potentially critical confounder to identify the causal relationship. We conduct two pre-registered experiments to assesses the effect of HMP on news bias and news sharing intentions regarding two different salient topics in the US, i.e. Police conduct (Study 1, n=817) and COVID-19 norms (Study 2, n=819), while accounting for prior beliefs. Results show that partisans perceive neutral coverage of news by outlets opposite to their political leaning as untrustworthy and biased, even when we account for their prior beliefs regarding the media outlet and news content. However, HMP seems to be limited in its consequences, as it does not affect partisans’ willingness to spread news from outlets of opposite political leaning.

Papers

Hostile media perception affects news bias, but not news sharing intentions. Lo Iacono, S., Dores Cruz, T.D. (submitted to PNAS)

Funding

IT Innovation Fund