A Three-Decade Retrospective on the Hostile Media Effect

Abstract

Some 30 years ago, Vallone, Ross, and Lepper (1985) conducted a pioneering study of the hostile media effect in which they demonstrated that partisans perceive media coverage as unfairly biased against their side. Over the ensuing decades, scores of experiments and surveys have extended their findings, demonstrating hostile media effects in a variety of domains. Taking the measure of the research more than 30 years later by systematically reviewing the many studies conducted in different locales, this article summarizes the knowledge base on the hostile media effect. The paper integrates findings, clarifies conceptual issues, and presents two research-based models of the effect. Future scholarly pathways are suggested, with a focus on how hostile media biases may change -or continue -in an era vastly different than the mass communication-dominated age in which the concept was pioneered.

Hostile media bias on social media: Testing the effect of user comments on perceptions of news bias and credibility

“…Specifically, individuals who held negative beliefs and attitudes to a specific news report were found to be more likely to develop hostile media bias (Giner‐Sorolla & Chaiken, ). Perloff () also strengthened the claim that prior attitude, or a previously held belief about a topic, remains an important factor in how individuals perceive bias. Further, it has been pointed out that individuals viewed information in the news report based on different standards and they thought that self‐aligning (i.e., congruent) opinions were more correct than those that differed from their own (i.e., incongruent) opinions (Gunther & Schmitt, ).…”

“…The hostile media phenomenon contends that individuals, especially strong partisans and individuals who are highly involved with an issue, are likely to perceive neutral media coverage as demonstrably biased against their point of view (Vallone, Ross, & Lepper, ), which in turn, lower trust in media and strengthen political polarization. This perceptual bias explains the relationships between attitudes, public opinion, and perceptions of media effects (Perloff, ).…”

“…This is an especially common practice on Facebook, the world's largest social media site that is the most used in the United States for news consumption (Matsa & Shearer, ). Perloff () has claimed that “social media differ from conventional media in their interactivity, helping to transform formerly passive receivers of political information into full‐fledged political Facebook posters” (p. 719). In an effort to investigate the role of poster in contributing to hostile media bias, this project aims to determine whether exposure to user‐generated Facebook comments posted on news articles seen before accessing news stories influences perceptions of bias.…”

Refugees in the media: Exploring a vicious cycle of frustrated psychological needs, selective exposure, and hostile intergroup attitudes

“…Accordingly, researchers found that people spend more efforts on scrutinizing attitude-incongruent versus attitude-congruent information to defend existing beliefs (Edwards & Smith, 1996). Moreover, research on "hostile media effects" suggests that people may perceive attitude-challenging media as unfairly biased against their own viewpoints (Perloff, 2015). In two studies, negative perceptions of refugees predicted biased media perceptions, suggesting that need deprivation may indeed be involved in such effects (Arlt, Dalmus, & Metag, 2018;Arlt & Wolling, 2016).…”

Expressing Opinions about the Refugee Crisis in Europe: The Spiral of Silence and Crisis Communication

“…The measure of media congruency (evaluation of news media reporting) is viewed as an alternative way to measure the subjective perception of the opinion climate. Even if this is not a straightforward question of how a respondent's own opinion is related to the general opinion, we know from previous research that people tend to generalize media content to the general view of societal problems and their effect on public opinion (Gunther & Storey, 2003;Perloff, 2015;Schulz & Roessler, 2012). Evaluation of news media reporting can therefore be seen as a proxy for the respondents' views on the opinion climate in society.…”