Hostile media effect
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The hostile media effect, sometimes called the hostile media phenomenon, refers to the finding that people with strong biases toward an issue (partisans) perceive media coverage as biased against their opinions. This finding cannot be attributed to the presence of bias in the news reports, as partisans from opposing sides of an issue rate the same coverage as biased against their side and biased in favor of the opposing side.[1] The phenomenon was first proposed and studied experimentally by Robert Vallone, Lee Ross and Mark Lepper [2].
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In the definitive study[3], pro-Palestinian students and pro-Israeli students at Stanford University were shown the same news filmstrips pertaining to the then-recent Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese militia fighters in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. On a number of objective measures, both sides found that these identical news clips were slanted in favor of the other side. Pro-Israeli students reported seeing more anti-Israel references and fewer favorable references to Israel in the news report and pro-Palestinian students reported seeing more anti-Palestinian references, and so on. Both sides said a neutral observer would have a more negative view of their side from viewing the clips, and that the media would have excused the other side where it blamed their side.
It is important to note that the two sides were not asked questions about subjective generalizations about the media coverage as a whole, such as what might be expressed as "I thought that the news has been generally biased against this side of the issue." Instead, when viewing identical news clips, subjects differed along partisan lines on simple, objective criteria such as the number of references to a given subject. The research suggests the hostile media effect is not just a difference of opinion but a difference of perception (selective perception).
This effect is interesting to psychologists because it appears to be a reversal of the otherwise pervasive effects of confirmation bias: in this area, people seem to pay more attention to information that contradicts rather than supports their pre-existing views. This is an example of disconfirmation bias.
Studies have found hostile media effects related to other political conflicts, such as strife in Bosnia[4] and in U.S. presidential elections[5].
An oft-cited forerunner to Vallone et. al.'s study was conducted by Albert Hartorf and Hadley Cantril in 1954[6]. Princeton and Dartmouth students were shown a filmstrip of a controversial Princeton-Dartmouth football game. Asked to count the number of infractions committed by both sides, students at both universities "saw" many more infractions committed by the opposing side, in addition to making very different generalizations about the game in general. Hartorf and Cantril concluded that "there is no such 'thing' as a 'game' existing 'out there' in its own right which people merely 'observe.' ... For the 'thing' simply is not the same for different people whether the 'thing' is a football game, a presidential candidate, Communism, or spinach."[7]
[edit] See also
[edit] Psychology
[edit] Media
- Media bias in the United States
- Media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict
- Media bias in South Asia
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Dalton, R. J., Beck, P. A., & Huckfeldt, R. (1998). Partisan Cues and the Media: Information Flows in the 1992 Presidential Election. American Political Science Review, 92, 1, 111-26.
- Hastorf, A. H. & Cantril, H. (1954). They Saw a Game: A Case Study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 129-134.
- Matheson, K. & Dursun, S. (2001). Social identity precursors to the hostile media phenomenon: Partisan perceptions of coverage of the Bosnian conflict. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 4, 117-126.
- Vallone, R. E, Lepper, M. R., & Ross, L. (1981). Perceptions of media bias in the 1980 presidential election. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University. As cited in Vallone, Ross & Lepper, 1985.
- Vallone, R. P., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the "Beirut Massacre". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 577-585. summary.
