Peers Versus Pros: Confirmation Bias in Selective Exposure to User-Generated Versus Professional Media Messages and Its Consequences

Westerwick, Axel; Sude, Daniel; Robinson, Mary; Knobloch‐Westerwick, Silvia

doi:10.1080/15205436.2020.1721542

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…It is true that confirmation bias is found to be more efficient when connected to a specific political issue (Westerwick et al, 2020). Arguably, many would assert that the media used the Tuskegee experiment case as one of the specific issues.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Taber and Lodge (2006) observe that Confirmation bias can also be dissected into two: confirmation versus disconfirmation. Like Allan (2017) the two authors argue that confirmation bias, though effective under specific political issues (Sude et al, 2019;Westerwick et al, 2020) tends to align with positive outcomes. This is because they occur only among motivated recipients, implying a contingent moderation of attitude importance.…”

Section: The Notion Of Selective Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

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US Media, Selective Exposure, and the Promotion of COVID-19 Vaccinations in Black and Latino Communities

Gondwe

2021

Journal of Black Studies

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Through selective exposure, this study examined the role the US news media played in encouraging or discouraging minority races from getting vaccinated. Through content analysis and focus groups, we were able to demonstrate that most media messages focused on prior beliefs in their reporting, therefore, discouraging the black and Latino minorities from getting the COVID-19 vaccinations. Further, while blacks and Latinos based their fears of the vaccines on health effects, white respondents were more concerned about government surveillance and the desire to go back to “normal” life after the quarantine. Ultimately, white respondents were more positive about vaccination arguing that they were tired of the quarantine and wanted normal life back.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Notion Of Selective Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

US Media, Selective Exposure, and the Promotion of COVID-19 Vaccinations in Black and Latino Communities

Gondwe

2021

Journal of Black Studies

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“…Similarly, partisan selective exposure, operationalized by behavioural and attitudinal measures tapping their preference for ideologically congruent media outlets and materials, facilitated opinion polarization by altering public opinion perceptions (Tsfati and Chotiner 2016). The significant mediating role of perceived opinion climate was confirmed whether the messages were produced by professional journalists or lay bloggers (Westerwick et al 2020), and whether the exposure to partisan news was volitional or incidental (Sude et al 2019).…”

Section: User Comments and Opinion Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Possibly, the exposure to the balanced news report might have alerted the participants to their opponents' rationales, thereby prompting them to adopt a more moderate position than they previously did. In fact, although they examined voluntary exposure, Westerwick et al (2020) also found that only the exposure to attitudediscrepant messages induced attitude changes in line with the message position, with no polarizing effect of attitude-consistent messages. While it is tempting to suspect potential asymmetry in the effects of partisan information, others reported that both incidental and selective exposure to attitude-consistent news reinforced attitudes while that to attitude-discrepant news weakened them.…”

Section: Theoretical and Practical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…As user-generated content has become an integral part of the media system, mass media messages are not the only source of information people utilize to appraise the opinion climate. Westerwick et al (2020), for instance, showed that participants inferred the opinion climate from both user-generated content (blogs) and professional media messages (news) to similar degrees. Directly germane to the current research, the exposure to user comments opposing the news position (vs. no comments) led participants to perceive public opinion to be more discordant with the news stance (Lee and Jang 2010), and opinion-challenging user comments heightened perceived hostility of the opinion climate to their own issue stance (Lee 2012).…”

Section: User Comments and Opinion Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When and How User Comments Affect News Readers’ Personal Opinion: Perceived Public Opinion and Perceived News Position as Mediators

2020

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Two experiments investigated when and how user comments on news websites affect individuals' personal opinion. In Study 1 (N ¼ 596), opinion-reinforcing (vs. opinion-challenging) user comments led participants to perceive both (a) public opinion and (b) the news tone to be more congenial to their own position, which induced opinion polarization. When user comments were presented within the news article as direct quotes, however, their influence on perceived public opinion was attenuated, with no corresponding change for perceived news position. Poorer message recall partly accounted for the reduced influence of quoted (vs. as-is) comments, but perceived manipulability did not. In Study 2 (N ¼ 261), those with higher need for cognition (NFC) were more likely to infer public opinion from the user comments in their original form than those quoted in the news, but the opposite was true for low NFCs. Results suggest that neither priming nor consensus heuristic fully explain the effects of user comments on personal opinion.

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Learning together out of climate change denial

Walker

2023

New Dir Adult Contin Educ

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Climate change denial is often rooted in an array of conspiracy theories with climate change itself viewed by some as the real conspiracy. While not all of us are climate change conspiracy theorists, it is upsetting for most of us to learn and accept that our climate is changing, that it is primarily human-caused, and that it is harming people, animals, and other living organisms. It is even harder to accept this new reality when it goes against our core and fundamental beliefs, and against the professed beliefs and positions of those groups with which we identify. The media-whether old or new-has not really helped educate, and has tended to reinforce what is termed 'myside' bias. Those of us in adult education know that presenting the correct information or facts is not enough to really teach people. Instead, I sense that learning to live together, to accept the painfulness of learning, and connecting in a shared concern for our fragile blue planet and what we have managed to create, needs to be part of the answer-as complex as this topic is.Shortly after waking up earlier this week, I sat up in bed, and scrolled down my newsfeed to read how, in the coming decades, melting "zombie ice" from Greenland was likely to lead to previously unthinkable levels of sea rising, potentially "entirely redrawing the map" of my city, Vancouver, BC (Mannie, 2022). The ocean is meters from my apartment building. It's enough for anyone to want to stick their head back under the covers, and pretend it isn't happening. As Kübler-Ross (1969) famously wrote, denial can often be the first way we cope with our own and our loved ones' death and dying. Climate change denial, then, seems like a pretty understandable response-it is a coping strategy that helps us deal with the overwhelming amalgam of difficult feelings that can arise when we ponder our own mortality, the death of species, and the suffering of fellow humans. On some level, most of us are climate change deniers. Greta Thunberg (2019) and Naomi Klein (2014) argue that ifThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

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Peers Versus Pros: Confirmation Bias in Selective Exposure to User-Generated Versus Professional Media Messages and Its Consequences

Cited by 15 publications

References 46 publications

US Media, Selective Exposure, and the Promotion of COVID-19 Vaccinations in Black and Latino Communities

US Media, Selective Exposure, and the Promotion of COVID-19 Vaccinations in Black and Latino Communities

When and How User Comments Affect News Readers’ Personal Opinion: Perceived Public Opinion and Perceived News Position as Mediators

Learning together out of climate change denial

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