Media and Politics Quiz 2

Affective polarization

Negative feelings toward opposing political parties.

Ideological polarization

Increasing distance between political beliefs or positions.

Confirmation bias

Favoring information that confirms existing beliefs.

Cognitive dissonance

Discomfort caused by conflicting beliefs or information.

Directionally motivated reasoning

Processing information to protect a preferred conclusion.

Non-directionally motivated reasoning

Processing information to determine what is true.

When is directional reasoning more likely?

When beliefs are tied closely to identity, values, or morality.

Professional journalism

Reporting guided by professional standards and factual accuracy.

Objectivity

Attempting to report facts without personal preferences shaping coverage.

Fairness

Representing relevant people, evidence, and perspectives accurately.

Impartiality

Avoiding favoritism toward a political side or interest.

Balance

Giving appropriate consideration to relevant sides of a dispute.

Pluralist tradition

Representing diverse viewpoints and interests in public debate.

Ideological bias

Systematically favoring a particular worldview or ideology.

Partisan bias

Systematically favoring or disfavoring a political party.

Visual bias

Images or visual choices influence how a story is perceived.

Temporal bias

Timing or placement of coverage affects attention.

Bad-news bias

Negative events receive disproportionate news attention.

Commercial bias

Coverage is influenced by financial or audience-engagement incentives.

Class bias

Coverage disproportionately reflects wealthy or powerful interests.

Glory bias

Emphasis on achievement, prestige, or national success

Sensationalism

Emphasizing dramatic or shocking content to attract attention.

How should ideological bias be identified?

Find consistent asymmetric coverage patterns using systematic analysis.

Propaganda Model

Media structures can favor powerful interests and preserve the status quo.

Herman and Chomsky

Scholars associated with the Propaganda Model and Manufacturing Consent.

Manufacturing consent

Media patterns can encourage acceptance of existing power arrangements.

Liberal Bias Model

Journalists' conscious or unconscious ideological beliefs can shape coverage.

Bias vs. reliability

Bias is systematic favoring

Why has journalistic negativity increased?

More watchdog reporting and human attention to negative information.

Anger and information

Can trigger action while reducing information-seeking and increasing hostility.

Anxiety and information

Can increase information-seeking and strengthen in-group identification.

Sadness and behavior

Can reduce action or encourage empathy and helping.

Videomalaise

Alienating effects of negative television news on political attitudes.

News avoidance

Deliberately limiting or avoiding news exposure.

News fatigue

Feeling overloaded by news and information.

Why can multiple news sources help?

They reveal missing context and allow comparisons across perspectives.

Why might multiple sources fail to help?

Motivated reasoning can cause people to dismiss challenging information.

Entertainment's political role

It conveys political information and shapes values and perspectives.

The West Wing

Entertainment example that can shape perceptions of politics and government.

Cultivation theory

Repeated media narratives shape perceptions of social reality.

Mainstreaming

Media exposure can make perceptions more similar across groups.

Politically relevant media

Media that influence political knowledge, attitudes, values, or behavior.

Political satire

Humor that uses ridicule to expose or criticize issues or power.

Purposes of satire

Criticize power, expose contradictions, inform, and reveal absurdity.

Possible effects of satire

Can increase interest or insight, but also cynicism or partisan reinforcement.

Attitudinal effect

A change in beliefs, opinions, or feelings.

Behavioral effect

A change in actions or behavior.

Misinformation

False or inaccurate information shared without necessarily intending deception.

Disinformation

False or misleading information deliberately spread to deceive.

Fake news

Fabricated or misleading content presented as news.

Propaganda

Communication designed to advance a political or ideological objective.

Conspiracy theory

An explanation attributing events to a secret plot.

Why is today's misinformation environment different?

Digital platforms enable faster, cheaper, wider distribution of content.

Motives for spreading misinformation

Attention, influence, politics, prejudice, profit, or foreign influence.

Reverse image search

Checks an image's origin and whether it is used in context.

Prebunking

Preparing people to recognize misinformation before encountering it.

Fact-checking

Investigating claims to assess whether evidence supports them.

Media literacy

Skills for evaluating sources, evidence, and credibility.

Online regulation

Policies addressing platforms, algorithms, moderation, or transparency.

Second-order effects of misinformation

Indirect effects, especially reduced trust in the wider information environment.

How can misinformation create a cycle of distrust?

Distrust encourages reliance on familiar beliefs, increasing motivated reasoning and vulnerability.

Horse-race journalism

Campaign coverage focused on who is winning or losing.

Common horse-race topics

Polls, strategy, debates, gaffes, drama, winners, and losers.

A benefit of horse-race journalism

Makes campaign competition easy to follow.

A problem with horse-race journalism

Crowds out policy discussion and exaggerates campaign drama.

Candidate schema

A narrative emphasizing candidates' traits, backgrounds, or styles over policy.

Frontrunner narrative

Disproportionate coverage of the candidate considered most likely to win.

Losing-ground narrative

Portrays a candidate as declining in support or viability.

Bandwagon narrative

Portrays a candidate as gaining support and momentum.

Electability narrative

Labels a candidate as able or unable to win.

Exceeding-expectations narrative

Portrays a candidate as performing better than observers expected.

Why can candidate narratives be problematic?

Coverage can reinforce narratives and distract from policies.

Poll

A survey estimating public attitudes or candidate support.

Population

The full group a poll aims to understand.

Sample

The subset of a population surveyed.

Margin of error

An estimate of sampling uncertainty under specified assumptions.

Selection bias

The selection process systematically favors certain people.

Undercoverage bias

Some parts of the target population are inadequately represented.

Nonresponse bias

Respondents differ systematically from nonrespondents.

Measurement bias

Questions or methods systematically distort responses.

Sampling error

Random variation from surveying a sample instead of the whole population.

Sampling error vs. bias

Sampling error is random uncertainty

How should polls be evaluated?

Check methodology, margin of error, source reputation, and poll averages.

Why can a large poll still be biased?

A large sample does not automatically fix systematic errors.

How do polls fuel candidate narratives?

Poll changes can be framed as frontrunner, losing-ground, or bandwagon stories.