Individual-level differences in negativity biases in news selection

Bachleda, Sarah; Neuner, Fabian G.; Soroka, Stuart; Guggenheim, Lauren; Fournier, Patrick; Naurin, Elin

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2019.109675

Cited by 29 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…We do not have strong expectations about whether domestic Canadian COVID-19 information is more or less likely to be propagated by Canadians. On one hand, the pandemic in the United States has been more severe than in Canada which, given strong preferences for negative news consumption and sharing (Bachleda et al, 2020), may mean that Canadians have spent even more time sharing information from the U.S. On the other hand, Canadians may be more likely to focus on how COVID-19 is spreading in their communities and thus prefer local information (something that has been documented more generally on social media, e.g., Al-Rawi, 2017). Legitimate information about COVID-19 also shares space with misinformation in social media spaces, and has been often promoted by right-wing news outlets in the U.S. (Motta et al, 2020).…”

Section: Us Information Influence Over Canadamentioning

confidence: 99%

Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

et al. 2021

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The COVID-19 pandemic has occurred alongside a worldwide infodemic where unprecedented levels of misinformation have contributed to widespread misconceptions about the novel coronavirus. Conspiracy theories, poorly sourced medical advice, and information trivializing the virus have ignored national borders and spread quickly. This information spread has occurred despite generally strong preferences for domestic national media and social media networks that tend to be geographically bounded. How, then, is (mis)information crossing borders so rapidly? Using social media and survey data, we evaluate the extent to which consumption and propagation patterns of domestic and international traditional news and social media can help inform theorizing about cross-national information spread. In a detailed case study of Canada, we employ a large multi-wave survey and a massive data set of Canadian Twitter users. We show that the majority of misinformation circulating on Twitter that is shared by Canadian accounts is retweeted from U.S.-based accounts. Moreover, exposure to U.S.-based media outlets is associated with COVID-19 misperceptions and increased exposure to U.S.-based information on Twitter is associated with an increased likelihood to post misinformation. We thus theorize and empirically identify a key globalizing infodemic pathway: disregard for national origin of social media posting.

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Section: Us Information Influence Over Canadamentioning

confidence: 99%

Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

et al. 2021

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“…These differences notwithstanding, negativity and incivility are in the eye of the beholder (Lipsitz & Geer, 2017; Sigelman & Kugler, 2003), so much so that different individuals might react differently to them. Beyond established factors such as, for example, individual resources (e.g., Fridkin & Kenney, 2004) or party identification (Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1995), recent research claims that the effects of attacks depend on voters’ personality and their attitudes towards political discourse (Fridkin & Kenney, 2011, 2019), in line with the broader research highlighting the centrality of “negativity bias” in information selection (e.g., Bachleda et al, 2020). Weinschenk and Panagopoulos (2014) show that respondents high in extraversion are more likely to be mobilized by negative campaign messages; inversely, respondents high in agreeableness can be discouraged to participate when exposed to negativity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Is Negative Campaigning a Matter of Taste? Political Attacks, Incivility, and the Moderating Role of Individual Differences

Nai

Maier

2020

American Politics Research

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We test how individual differences moderate the attitudinal effects of attack politics in two online experiments among US respondents, surveyed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk ( N = 1,408 and N = 1,081). Study 1 tests the moderating effect of personality traits (Big Five, Dark Triad) on the effectiveness of character vs. policy attacks. Study 2 investigates the difference between civil and uncivil attacks and explores the moderating effect of Big Five, Dark Triad, tolerance to negativity and conflict avoidance. Results suggest that the effects of negativity and incivility are not uniform across all respondents. For instance, evaluations of the sponsor are more negative after exposure to negative messages for respondents high in conflict avoidance; respondents high in psychopathy are more likely to have a more negative opinion of the target after being exposed to character attacks, whereas incivility worsen the perception of the target for individuals low in conflict avoidance and agreeableness. Harsher campaigns, in other terms, work particularly well for some – and are particularly rejected by others. The implications of these trends are discussed.

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“…The extent to which this cross-sectional variation reflects durable individual-level differences, however, is unclear. We can point to recent work that finds a correlation in the same individuals' preferences for negative headlines at two different points in time (Bachleda et al 2020), or work connecting (ostensibly durable) learning biases to news consumption (Soroka et al N.d.). There also is a considerable body of work arguing that certain types of negativity biases are related to political conservatism (Hibbing et al 2014;Shook and Fazio 2009)a finding that could be interpreted to suggest, at least indirectly, that individuals have durable valence-based asymmetries.…”

Section: Valence-based Asymmetries Vary Across Individualsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The latter group is somewhat larger, as we might expect. But there is variation, and most important for our purposes, that variation is linked to news consumption as well (Bachleda et al 2020;Soroka et al N.d.).…”

Section: Valence-based Asymmetries Vary Across Individualsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Increasing Viability of Good News

Soroka

Krupnikov

2021

Self Cite

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In spite of what appears to be the increasingly negative tone of media coverage, this Element suggests that the prevalence of positive news is likely to increase, for three reasons: (1) valence-based asymmetries vary over time, (2) valence-based asymmetries vary across individuals, and (3) technology facilitates diverse news platforms catering to diverse preferences. Each of these claims is examined in detail here, based on analyses of prior and/or novel data on media content, psychophysiological responses, and survey-based experiments. Results are considered as they relate to our understanding of media gatekeeping, political communication, and political psychology, and also as actionable findings for producers of media content, communications platforms, and media consumers.

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Individual-level differences in negativity biases in news selection

Cited by 29 publications

References 41 publications

Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

Infodemic Pathways: Evaluating the Role That Traditional and Social Media Play in Cross-National Information Transfer

Is Negative Campaigning a Matter of Taste? Political Attacks, Incivility, and the Moderating Role of Individual Differences

The Increasing Viability of Good News

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