That's Not the Way It Is: How User-Generated Comments on the News Affect Perceived Media Bias

This study investigated if user-generated comments on Internet news sites affect readers' inferences about public opinion, and subsequently, their perceptions of media bias, and how ego-involvement moderates such effects. Supporting the notion that hostile media perception (HMP) stems from defensive processing, those who read others' comments discordant (vs. concordant) with their own opinion believed that the public was against their position and perceived the news report to be more hostile and partial in its coverage, but such effects were limited to those with higher ego-involvement. Readers' comments also had a direct effect on HMP among more involved individuals, without altering their perceptions of public opinion, suggesting that people might misattribute the opinions expressed in others' comments to the news article. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

[1]  A. Gunther,et al.  Congenial public, contrary press, and biased estimates of the climate of opinion. , 2001, Public opinion quarterly.

[2]  William P. Eveland,et al.  Political Discussion Frequency, Network Size, and “Heterogeneity” of Discussion as Predictors of Political Knowledge and Participation , 2009 .

[3]  Eun-Ju Lee,et al.  What Do Others’ Reactions to News on Internet Portal Sites Tell Us? Effects of Presentation Format and Readers’ Need for Cognition on Reality Perception , 2010, Commun. Res..

[4]  Dolf Zillmann,et al.  Exemplification Theory of Media Influence , 2002 .

[5]  Hyunyi Cho,et al.  Development and Validation of Value-, Outcome-, and Impression-Relevant Involvement Scales , 2005, Commun. Res..

[6]  Duane T. Wegener,et al.  Flexible Correction Processes in Social Judgment: Correcting for Context-Induced Contrast , 1993 .

[7]  Eun-Mee Kim,et al.  The Effect of Replies in Internet News on the Audience , 2006 .

[8]  Shelly Chaiken,et al.  The heuristic-systematic model in its broader context. , 1999 .

[9]  Albert C. Gunther,et al.  Assimilation and Contrast in a Test of the Hostile Media Effect , 2009, Commun. Res..

[10]  Mark R. Lepper,et al.  The hostile media phenomenon: biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre. , 1985 .

[11]  Albert C. Gunther,et al.  Mapping Boundaries of the Hostile Media Effect , 2004 .

[12]  William P. Eveland,et al.  The Impact of Individual and Interpersonal Factors on Perceived News Media Bias , 2003 .

[13]  Jounghwa Choi,et al.  Elaboration of the Hostile Media Phenomenon , 2009, Commun. Res..

[14]  Kristopher J Preacher,et al.  Addressing Moderated Mediation Hypotheses: Theory, Methods, and Prescriptions , 2007, Multivariate behavioral research.

[15]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Heuristic processing can bias systematic processing: effects of source credibility, argument ambiguity, and task importance on attitude judgment. , 1994, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[16]  Albert C. Gunther,et al.  Why Partisans See Mass Media as Biased , 2004, Commun. Res..

[17]  Annie Lang,et al.  The limited capacity model of mediated message processing , 2000 .

[18]  Albert C. Gunther,et al.  Broad Reach or Biased Source? Decomposing the Hostile Media Effect , 2006 .

[19]  Kristopher J Preacher,et al.  Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models , 2008, Behavior research methods.