Media in a Free Society FINAL (YOU GOT THIS BRO)

Nyhan: 5 Myths About Misinformation

1. Myth: Most Americans dwell in online echo chambers

2. Myth: Consumption of news from dubious websites is widespread

3. Myth: ‘Fake news’ led to Donald Trump’s election

4. Fact-checks usually backfire?

5. We’re now in a post-truth era?

Most Americans dwell in online echo chambers

Not really, people’s behaviors do sway towards their political positions, but people’s media diets online are mostly divided by ideology. But the groups and networks they talk with about politics are less diverse

Fact-checks usually backfire

No, it is possible to correct misinformation but core beliefs usually remain unchanged. Exposure to fact-checks tends to increase the accuracy of people’s beliefs but they do not change their views towards a particular candidate

Origins of public misinformation and polarization

“Fake News” is more rare than one might think, however the origins of public misinformation and polarization are more likely to lie in the content of ordinary news or the avoidance of news to forage a particular narrative

What were effects of conspiracies about COVID from the GOP?

1. higher death rates among Republicans from Covid

2. spillover to misinformed beliefs about other life-saving vaccines

“Pizzagate”

Insane conspiracy theory claiming that a Washington, D.C. pizzeria was the center of a child trafficking ring linked to prominent politicians.

Conspiracy Theories and killing them

Frankovic: Conspiracy theories are hard to kill, regardless of how stupid and/or dangerous, especially when they have a partisan component to them that leads to directionally motivated reasoning (i.e, believing what you want to believe)

A way to make conspiracies lose traction:

Need elites from both parties to denounce conspiracies like QAnon because public follows elite cue

Other recent conspiracies spread through willful mis/disinformation, with potentially tragic consequences:

Lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH “eating cats”
Lies about natural disasters (Hurricane Helene): Government “making” the weather, withholding funds, etc

How did something as outrageous and obviously racist as the false Haitian cat-eating story catch fire?

Participatory Disinformation: Elites set the frames. Audiences create content to fit those frames. Influences selectively amplify content to reinforce the frames and help move content from audiences back up to elites

Abbie Richards Consipracy Chart (upside-down pyramid):

Grounded in Reality: (Watergate, Tuskegee, FBI spying on MLK)
Speculation Line (“We have questions”): (UFOs, JFK)
Leaving Reality (False but harmless): Elvis is still alive, Alien abductions
Reality Denial (Dangerous): Global warming is a hoax, 9/11 “truthers”, Antifa did Jan. 6, anti-vax)
“The Antisemitic Point of No Return”: World controlled by small cabal, usually said to be including jews (Pizzagate, Qanon, Holocaust denial, Sandy Hook fake)

Motivated Reasoning

People hear what they want to hear

Does Fact Checking Work?

Studies suggest that fact checking works, but might also lead readers to think the story is biased.

How long do factchecks last for?

They fade over time pretty quickly unless people hear the same accurate messages about climate change again and again.

Poynter Study":

About as many people read Fake News as read Fact Checks

Edsall argument about conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories are a powerful tool to demonize opposing groups, and in extreme cases can make people believe that violence is necessary

What groups do conspiracy theories often resonate with?

Groups that are suffering from loss, weakness or disunity (eg. White nationalists)

Agenda Setting in Media

Media doesn’t tell us what to think, they tell us what to think about, the most covered topics in the news tend to be the issues people think are most important

Media Priming

Similar to Agenda Setting, but it is about how media influences judgments of politicians, specifically: the issue covered the most in the news tends to be the issue voters are most likely to think about when making judgments about candidates

Media Priming Age in 2024

Many articles about Biden’s age were written and made voters see his age as a major problem/issue

Framing

The narrative choices reporters and editors make in selecting certain types of information over others in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described

Framing effects: Episodic

tends to lead to individual level attributions of responsibility, meaning people think causes and solutions are individual-based and support punitive outcomes

Framing effects: thematic

leads to societal level attributions of responsibility, meaning people are more likely to think society is to blame and are likely to support societal or less punitive outcomes

Punitive outcome meaning

Punishment or to punish

Independent variables

the things that influence, effect, cause other things (eg. strategy framed news stories)

Dependent variables

The things that are influenced, effected, moved (eg. political self-efficacy, cynicism)

Survey Research effects on results

Question wording
Question order
Non attitudes, memory
Issues with social desirability and survey setting influencing responses (eg. race of interviewer)

Non-attitude

A belief made up by someone who does not actually have an opinion on the subject

Advantages of Experiments

Casual inference because of random assignment and control over administration of independent variable. They have internal validity

Disadvantages of Experiments

Not always generalizable, lack external validity because may not work same way outside lab

What is the top rank agenda for newpapers and newcasts?

Crime coverage

Crime coverage is not related to crime rates

one study documents that as crime fell 34% between 1991 and 2000, stories in the press about homicides rose 700%

Media Distorting black families

When media outlets report poor families, they chose to feature black families in their coverage 59 percent of the time even though only 27 percent of families living below the poverty line are black

In terms of welfare, 60 percent of families portrayed were black even though only 42 percent of families receiving welfare are black

Missing White Woman Syndrome

Media’s tendency to highlight missing persons cases involving young, attractive white women, while paying less attention to other people

Ways the press marginalizes social movements:

a. norm of objectivity

b. trivializing and skepticism

c. routine: official sources are only trustworthy ones

d. divide movements into legitimate main acts and illegitimate side shows

e. celebritification

f. radicalize

Potential Protest Frames

Riot Frame
Confrontation Frame
Spectacle Frame
Debate Frame

Confrontation Frame

A focus on clashes between groups, arrests, use of weapons, who was detained. Police and protester interactions. Police forces brought in or weapons prepared by police

Spectacle Frame

A focus on emotional reactions of protesters, ie. profanity, crying, screaming, laughing
Vigils, performances, oddities, singing, dancing, playing games
Crowd size, appearance or attire (masks)

Debate Frame

A focus on protesters viewpoints or demands and the social movement driving protests
Radical justice, systemic racism, police brutality, police reform, defunding police
Historical context for the protests

Agenda seeding

How activists use protest/disruption to capture the attention of the media and overcome political asymmetries caused by hostile majorities

Media coverage of protest can lead to legislative action

through extensive and agreeable media coverage that signals to lawmakers the urgent and legitimate demands of groups whose views are often compromised within conventional electoral channels

Media matter in how we see protests

It’s not just “non-violent protest moves public opinion left; violent leads right.” Reserach shows it’s protest → media attention/framing → opinion

Protest paradigm

tends to dismiss or disparage protesters and protest tactics through a reliance on police and government sources, along with episodic, conflict-based stories that fail to engage the complex social causes of protest

What happens when news stories employ sensational images of property damage, using terms such as riot, mayhem and chaos?

Rise in public support for law-and-order and crackdowns on protest, rather than support for social policies to address the roots of protest

Indexing hypothesis

Press coverage of war and international crises, at least in establishment and early phases, tends to reflect the range of debate of elites, especially the White House and Congress
Only if a crises/war stays unresolved for a while does the press seek out other perspectives/sources/frames.

White House dominates the indexing dynamic: Its frames are privileged in media coverage.

Press “indexes” coverage to intensity and duration of official conflicts

Cultural Congruence:

degree to which framing aligns with public opinion/values

Hard power bias in media

is the media is far more critical when a president tries to end a war than when he tries to start one

Post Censorship

Media allowed on front lines, copy censored before publication Norm through Vietnam

Pre-censorship

Media kept off front lines

British start with Falklands War

US uses in Persian Gulf War

Embedding

Media allowed on front lines, but assigned to units Afghanistan, Iraq

Vietnam Coverage Myths

MYTH: Anti-War from the beginning
MYTH: Lots of casualty coverage
MYTH: Turned the public against the war

Casualty coverage

non-existant

Cute cat theory of digital activism

accidentally see political content similar to how some people can learn about politicas and current events through soft news