Partisan media influence non-political recipients
The political views of U.S. media consumers are influenced by partisan reporting when they have little interest in politics and typically consume only nonpartisan media. This is the conclusion of a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
According to the research team, the influence of media on political views is limited because people react to them very differently and many personal factors are at play. "Political persuasion is hard. If it were easy, the world would look significantly different today," says Adam Berinsky, a professor at MIT and co-author of the study.
To determine how biased coverage affects viewers' political views, the MIT team conducted a series of experiments and surveys with several subgroups of subjects. These were divided based on factors such as ideology and preferences in media. The researchers showed study participants political content from partisan and nonpartisan media and tested their reaction to it.
It turned out that respondents who voluntarily consume partisan media are less influenced by their content than those who are more inclined toward nonpartisan media. This means that non-political people who do not have a fixed opinion are more likely to be persuaded than those who already know what their preference is. According to the researchers, just one exposure to partisan media can shift the political orientation of a previously apolitical person by one-third. Partisan reporting can also have an impact on partisan viewers, they said, but it is much smaller.
Berinsky points out that most people in the U.S. are not interested in political news. Influence by partisan media is unlikely among a large portion of the population, he said. "We've only found that these people are impressionable because we've forced them to watch news," Berinsky says. In the future, the scientists also want to explore the effects of reporting that goes against the views of the viewers. (pte)
