Election and Political News
News coverage frequently gives an inaccurate view of how people actually feel about contentious issues: while more than 80 percent of Americans support policies aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change, for example, they believe that fewer than half agree with them.[2] Even Thomas Jefferson, a lifelong advocate for freedom of the press, said while he was president that “nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
What has changed since Jefferson’s time is that many of us get our news (or are first exposed to news stories) through sources such as search engines or social media. These platforms make their money largely by building profiles of us and then using these profiles to deliver content tailored to what we do, like and believe. This includes relevant advertisements as well as news stories that confirm our biases (either because they match our profile or because our like-minded friends have shared them). These platforms are also configured to deliver the most engaging content, which may become viral because it is heavily biased, outrageous, or “too good to be true.” Even if we don't fully believe such a story, it can come to seem more credible just by being repeated – especially by people we know, such as in our friends’ news and social media feeds.[3]
This matters because we are naturally inclined to believe things, even things that are unbelievable, if they reinforce what we already think to be true. This effect is even more powerful when it comes to stronger beliefs, such as politics or ideology: one study found that people on both ends of the American political spectrum were more likely to believe and to share news that reinforced their beliefs.[4]
By appealing to our biases and beliefs, these claims, words and images can trigger what’s called “hot cognition,” which puts emotion in the driver’s seat and changes how we view everything we read or hear afterwards[5] – to the extent that information that contradicts our beliefs can actually make us more committed to them.[6] Consciously or unconsciously, writers often compound this by using terms that signal adherence to one viewpoint or another – “oil sands” instead of “tar sands,” for instance.[7] Use of terms like these, which implicitly show the writer’s political affiliation, may in part explain why people who know more about politics are actually more likely to stick to their beliefs in the face of contrary evidence.[8]
Many of the things that characterize our modern news environment – the ability to select only news we agree with, the delivery of news that is algorithmically filtered to engage our emotions, the ease with which misinformation spreads into legitimate news, and the tendency (as a result of these other factors) for news outlets to tailor their content to their core audience’s beliefs – have “unambiguously negative implications for democratic deliberation. When individuals accept misinformation used to support policy arguments, or, even worse, when they choose to trumpet that misinformation to justify their position on an issue, they may well lead others who are not aware that the information is inaccurate to adopt a position they would not otherwise hold.”[9]
The good news is that while knowing more about politics doesn’t protect us from being misled by biases – our own or others’ – digital media literacy does. Readers who have received media literacy training are significantly less likely to agree with inaccurate claims, whether or not they agree with the reader’s own beliefs. Though digital media literacy is sometimes perceived as having its own ideological slant, this effect was the same regardless of the readers’ political beliefs, with those who identified as liberals being as likely to reject false claims that aligned with their beliefs as those who identified as conservatives. Media education produces citizens who “still hold strong values and beliefs, but […] adopt a critical stance when evaluating an argument– even when that argument aligns with their partisan preferences.”[10]
[1] Davidson, S., & Winfield, B. Journalism: The Lifeblood of a Democracy. What Good is Journalism?: How Reporters and Editors Are Saving America’s Way of Life.
[2] Sparkman, G., Geiger, N., & Weber, E. U. (2022). Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half. Nature communications, 13(1), 4779.
[3] Vellani, V., Zheng, S., Ercelik, D., & Sharot, T. (2023). The illusory truth effect leads to the spread of misinformation. Cognition, 236, 105421.
[4] Pereira, A., Harris, E., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2023). Identity concerns drive belief: The impact of partisan identity on the belief and dissemination of true and false news. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 26(1), 24-47.
[5] Lodge, M., & Taber, C. S. (2005). The automaticity of affect for political leaders, groups, and issues: An experimental test of the hot cognition hypothesis. Political Psychology, 26, 455–482.
[6] Redlawsk, David. (2002). Hot Cognition or Cool Consideration? Testing the Effects of Motivated Reasoning on Political Decision Making. Political Science Publications. 64. 10.1111/1468-2508.00161.
[7] Whetter, D. (2020). Bitumen, Bit of Me, Bit of You: Climate Change, National Literatures, Peak Oil, and Canada’s Tar Sands. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 27(1), 128-149.
[8] Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755–769. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00214.x
[9] Kahne, J., & Bowyer, B. (2017). Educating for democracy in a partisan age: Confronting the challenges of motivated reasoning and misinformation. American educational research journal, 54(1), 3-34.
[10] Kahne, J., & Bowyer, B. (2017). Educating for democracy in a partisan age: Confronting the challenges of motivated reasoning and misinformation. American educational research journal, 54(1), 3-34.