| 1. |
- Andersen, Kim, et al.
(författare)
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The scary world syndrome: News orientations, negativity bias, and the cultivation of anxiety
- 2024
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Ingår i: Mass Communication & Society. - 1520-5436. ; 27:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Negativity bias is one of the most salient features of news reporting. According to cultivation theory, this bias can foster anxiety about societal issues among news audiences. The relationship is, however, likely to depend on the audience’s news orientations and the issue under consideration. Drawing on a content analysis of mainstream and alternative news media and a three-wave panel survey, both conducted in Sweden, we examine how general and alternative news orientations relate to egotropic anxiety (worry about being personally affected or harmed) about violent crimes and climate change. The results show that while alternative news media portray violent crimes more negatively than mainstream news media, the opposite is true for climate change, which mainstream news media portray more negatively than alternative news media. Consistent with this finding, alternative news orientation is related to higher levels of anxiety about violent crimes, while general news orientation is related to higher levels of anxiety about climate change, illustrating how people seek information that concur with and thereby maintain or reinforce their beliefs. These results have consequences both for cultivation theory and for our understanding of the role played by mainstream and alternative news media in society.
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| 2. |
- Djerf-Pierre, Monika, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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Media Salience Shifts and the Public’s Perceptions About Reality: How Fluctuations in News Media Attention Influence the Strength of Citizens’ Sociotropic Beliefs
- 2024
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Ingår i: Mass Communication & Society. - 1520-5436.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines whether shifts in news media attention to societal issues matter for how strong beliefs citizens have about those issues. Based on an issue signal approach, in which media salience is conceptualized as signal strength, the study analyzes whether sociotropic beliefs become more prevalent, extreme, and certain when news media salience rises, and less prevalent, extreme, and certain when media salience drops. Using a four-wave panel survey dataset collected over a two-year period, the empirical analysis links media content analyses of issue salience to panel survey data, comparing four issues with different levels of baseline salience and political controversy: violent crimes, immigration, climate change, and antibiotic resistance. The analysis shows that issue-specific news media exposure and issue-specific use of alternative media offer two different pathways to the formation of beliefs. The hypothesized relationship with news media salience was supported for the two controversial issues with high baseline salience (immigration and violent crimes), but not for climate change and antibiotic resistance. The results indicate that issue attributes matter and that audiences may respond differently to salience shifts depending on the level of controversy of the issue.
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| 3. |
- Hopmann, D. N., et al.
(författare)
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Contagious Media Effects: How Media Use and Exposure to Game-Framed News Influence Media Trust
- 2015
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Ingår i: Mass Communication and Society. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1520-5436 .- 1532-7825. ; 18:6, s. 776-798
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which trust in media is affected by personal media use and the framing of politics as a strategic game. The study is based on a four-wave panel survey matched with media content data, which allows us to investigate not only correlations but also individual-level effects on media trust. In accordance with previous research, our analyses show that the use of specific media types leads to more trust in those specific media. The results also show that media framing of politics as a strategic game has a negative effect on trust in the media. The more citizens are exposed to game-framed news, the less they tend to trust the media, with the exception of tabloid newspapers. Overall, these results lend support to the assumption of contagious effects of game-framed news. In a concluding section, we sum up our results and discuss the implications of our findings.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Lindgren, Elina
(författare)
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Changing Policy With Words: How Persuasive Words in Election Pledges Influence Voters’ Beliefs About Policies
- 2018
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Ingår i: Mass Communication & Society. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1520-5436 .- 1532-7825. ; 21:4, s. 425-449
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Parties often frame their election pledges with value-laden words such as freedom and equality, and it is well known that this can influence voters’ support for policies. However, research is not conclusive about why as of yet. This article adds to common explanations of value-framing effects by proposing a linguistic explanation to how citizens are influenced by value words in election pledges. Drawing on what linguistic theory says about persuasive words, this article hypothesizes that value-laden words elicit different beliefs about policy content, beyond what has actually been pledged. To support this assertion, a survey experiment (N = 739) shows that such words do provoke different beliefs about policies and that this, in turn, influences the extent to which individuals support the policies. The findings have implications for representative democracy, as they indicate that voters’ outspoken support for policy pledges do not necessarily reflect their true policy preferences.
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| 6. |
- Shehata, Adam, 1981, et al.
(författare)
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Climate Change Frame Acceptance and Resistance: Extreme Weather, Consonant News, and Personal Media Orientations
- 2022
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Ingår i: Mass Communication & Society. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1520-5436 .- 1532-7825. ; 25:1, s. 51-76
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Across the globe, extreme weather events have brought climate change into people’s daily lives. Extended heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires are now recurring in many regions across the globe. This study asks how the exceptional 2018 summer influenced climate change beliefs among Swedish citizens. More specifically, the study looks deeper into belief formation dynamics under intense, consonant, and extended news reporting–addressing one of the most fundamental media effects in the literature: the over-time maintenance of societal beliefs through cumulative and repetitive exposure to a dominant issue frame. Using a unique three-wave panel survey, the analysis focuses on citizens’ acceptance (and resistance) of the dominant climate change frame provided by traditional media–whether citizens believe in the existence, causes, and consequences of climate change. The findings reveal strong support for belief maintenance effects over time, but also that belief changes are possible. Even in situations of intense and consonant news reporting, acceptance (and resistance) of the dominant climate change frame depends on citizens’ personal media orientations. Both trust in traditional news media and usage of alternative online news emerge as key factors conditioning classic media effects in a fragmented and polarized media environment.
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| 7. |
- Shehata, Adam, 1981
(författare)
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News Habits Among Adolescents: The Influence of Family Communication on Adolescents’ News Media Use—Evidence From a Three-Wave Panel Study
- 2016
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Ingår i: Mass Communication & Society. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1520-5436 .- 1532-7825. ; 19:6, s. 758-781
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Keeping up with what’s going on in the world of politics and current affairs through various news media is commonly seen as important for civic engagement and informed citizenship. Today, however, citizens face more opportunities than ever to select media content according to their personal preferences and interests—leading to what previous research has identified as a polarization between news-seekers and news-avoiders. Given heightened concerns regarding growing shares of news-avoiders in particular, this study analyzes the development, stability, and family influences on Swedish adolescents’ news habits over time. The findings, based on panel survey data among adolescents and their parents, show that (a) news habits are fairly stable at the individual level, (b) parents’ own news consumption is the most consistent predictor of adolescents’ development of news habits, and (c) these family effects are distinct from adolescents’ personal motivations for seeking out news.
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| 8. |
- Strömbäck, Jesper, 1971, et al.
(författare)
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Political Opinion Leaders in High-Choice Information Environments: Are They More Informed Than Others?
- 2023
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Ingår i: Mass Communication & Society. - 1520-5436.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- One implication of the transition to high-choice media environments is that what information people are exposed to depend less on journalistic curation and more on social, algorithmic, and personal curation. This has sparked a renewed interest in the concept of political opinion leaders, who are often assumed to be more interested in and informed about politics and society. Theoretically, political opinion leaders could hence help disseminate information to less interested and informed. At the same time, there are theoretical reasons for why political opinion leaders may be more prone to politically motivated reasoning, which may lead them to believe in and disseminate misinformation. Thus far, there is only limited research on whether political opinion leaders are more informed than others that also takes into consideration that some facts are contested, whereas other facts are uncontested. Hence, this paper seeks to investigate the relationship between political opinion leadership and knowledge, distinguishing between (a) uncontested and (b) contested facts. Among other things, findings show that those who score high in political opinion leadership traits in general are not more knowledgeable about contested and uncontested facts.
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| 9. |
- Theorin, Nora, 1989
(författare)
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Maintainers of Ethnic Hierarchies? Investigating the Relationship Between Media Use and Attitudes Toward Perceived Remote Versus Perceived Close Immigration
- 2019
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Ingår i: Mass Communication & Society. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1520-5436 .- 1532-7825. ; 22:6, s. 827-850
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The immigration issue seems to have consolidated a top position on the European political agenda, and the body of literature devoted to explaining attitudes toward immigration continues to expand. Alongside established models focusing on threat perceptions as the central mechanism behind anti-immigration attitudes, increased attention has been paid to the role of media. The aim of the present study is to test the effects of media use on attitudes toward immigration from regions that are perceived to be remote versus those close to the host society. Moreover, the study goes beyond previous research by investigating reciprocal relationships between the use of specific media types and attitudes toward immigration. While the empirical findings suggest that the effects of using traditional news media is weak, right-wing alternative media appears more powerful in influencing immigration attitudes. Specifically, the results indicate that the use of right-wing alternative media reinforces negative attitudes toward perceived remote immigration. At the same time, the use of right-wing alternative media appears to stimulate more positive attitudes toward perceived close immigration. Further, reciprocal relationships were found between right-wing alternative media use and attitudes toward immigration.
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| 10. |
- Vliegenthart, Rens, et al.
(författare)
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Taking Political Alternative Media into Account: Investigating the Linkage Between Media Repertories and (Mis)perceptions.
- 2023
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Ingår i: Mass Communication & Society. - 1520-5436.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In most studies on news repertoires and the linkage between media use and (mis)perceptions of social and political matters, the use of political alternative media has not been included. In this paper, we therefore investigate how people combine both traditional and political alternative media into different media repertoires, and how these media repertoires are related to misperceptions. We rely on a two-wave panel survey, conducted in 2020 and 2021, with a probability-recruited sample of the Swedish population. Measures on the use of a wide range of media, including political alternative ones, are used to conduct a Latent Profile Analysis. This analysis distinguishes five media repertoires in the data. The results show that these repertoires coincide with different levels of misperceptions, with those dominated by TV use showing higher levels of misperceptions and those with higher newspaper and alternative media use showing lower levels of misperceptions. Results also show that media repertoires do not affect over-time changes in misperceptions.
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