Natalie Jomini Stroud
Biographic Data
| ID | 193185 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Natalie Jomini Stroud |
| GIVEN NAMES | Natalie Jomini |
| FAMILY NAME | Stroud |
| SIGNATURE | STROUD N J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3528-9986 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 62 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 844 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 62 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
A cross-country examination of normative expectations of social media platforms
Normative expectations of social media platforms, or what people believe is important for social media platforms to do, include actions such as “show reliable information” and “ensure that people feel safe.” This study examines whether normative expectations vary by country and platform. A survey of over 20,000 people across 20 countries allowed us to investigate beliefs about 14 normative expectations. Although there is a relationship between th…
Intellectual humility's effects on political polarization and engagement
Drawing on theories about intergroup contact and the effects of language, this study tests whether the use of intellectual humility in political posts influences affective polarization, perceived polarization, and willingness to engage with opposing views. Using data from a U.S.-representative 2 (intellectual humility: low or high) × 4 (issue) between-subjects experiment with an offset control, this study shows that expressions of intellectual hu…
Using Facebook Messenger versus Groups for News Engagement
For online news organizations trying to improve audience engagement strategies, Facebook Groups and Messenger chats constitute promising avenues. We explore whether these meso news-spaces, with different discourse architectures and group sizes, affect the substance of the discussion and people’s impressions. In this study, we experimentally tested how training and intimate forms of news engagement in small-group discussions on Facebook Messenger …
The impact of using person-centered language to reference stigmatized groups in news coverage
News coverage often uses stigmatizing language to label marginalized groups. Person-centered language has been discussed as a potential remedy, which this study tests for the first time. Using a between-subjects experiment with members of three marginalized groups ( n = 339), we investigate whether news articles that use person-centered terms (e.g., “person with substance use disorder”) instead of stigmatizing terms (e.g., “drug abuser”) improve …
The Diffusion and Reach of (Mis)Information on Facebook during the U.S. 2020 Election
Social media creates the possibility for rapid, viral spread of content, but how many posts actually reach millions? And is misinformation special in how it propagates? We answer these questions by analyzing the virality of and exposure to information on Facebook during the U.S. 2020 presidential election. We examine the diffusion trees of the approximately 1 B posts that were re-shared at least once by U.S.-based adults from July 1, 2020, to Feb…
Journalist Identity and Selective Exposure: The Effects of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in News Staff
Newsrooms are challenged with representing a diverse public, yet news staff are not always diverse themselves. Drawing from research on selective exposure along lines of race and ethnicity, this study explores how journalists' race or ethnicity affects an individual's likelihood of reading a news story and feelings of media representation. We find little evidence that different racial and ethnic groups respond differently to hearing and seeing by…
Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing
Many critics raise concerns about the prevalence of ‘echo chambers’ on social media and their potential role in increasing political polarization. However, the lack of available data and the challenges of conducting large-scale field experiments have made it difficult to assess the scope of the problem 1,2 . Here we present data from 2020 for the entire population of active adult Facebook users in the USA showing that content from ‘like-minded’ s…
Asymmetric ideological segregation in exposure to political news on Facebook
Does Facebook enable ideological segregation in political news consumption? We analyzed exposure to news during the US 2020 election using aggregated data for 208 million US Facebook users. We compared the inventory of all political news that users could have seen in their feeds with the information that they saw (after algorithmic curation) and the information with which they engaged. We show that (i) ideological segregation is high and increase…
How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
We investigated the effects of Facebook’s and Instagram’s feed algorithms during the 2020 US election. We assigned a sample of consenting users to reverse-chronologically-ordered feeds instead of the default algorithms. Moving users out of algorithmic feeds substantially decreased the time they spent on the platforms and their activity. The chronological feed also affected exposure to content: The amount of political and untrustworthy content the…
Curbing the decline of local news by building relationships with the audience
In the struggle to find sustainable business models, many local news sites have turned to engaged journalism, which draws from social exchange theory and aims to build relationships with audiences. The causal impact of these initiatives is unclear, but important given that local news sites are critical information sources and face dire economic situations. In this study, 20 news sites were randomly assigned to launch a six-month engaged journalis…
The Stability of Cable and Broadcast News Intermedia Agenda Setting Across the Covid-19 Issue Attention Cycle
In today's fragmented media environment, it is unclear whether the correspondence between media agendas that characterizes intermedia agenda setting persists. Through a combination of manual and computerized content analysis of 486,068 paragraphs of COVID−19 coverage across 4,589 cable and broadcast news transcripts, we analyze second and third-level attribute agenda setting, both in terms of central themes and aspects. Through the lens of the is…
Partisan Memes as a Catalyst for Homophilous Networks
Although diverse political networks are seen as democratically valuable, online social networks enable the construction and maintenance of networks that are less diverse. In this study, we explore the cultivation of like-minded networks through blocking those sharing counter-attitudinal partisan memes and engaging with pro-attitudinal partisan memes. We then test the efficacy of an intervention to reduce the spread of homophily-inducing partisan …
“Crisis Coverage Gap”: The Divide between Public Interest and Local News’ Facebook Posts about Covid-19 in the United States
This study sought to theorize the crisis coverage gap, a new way of understanding the divide between public information needs and local digital news coverage during a crisis, through the context of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. We used a three-wave panel survey of Americans (n = 730) and analyses of local news posted on Facebook (n = 2,632) at three points during the early pandemic to illustrate how the crisis coverage gap operates. Findings dem…
Signaling news outlet trust in a Google Knowledge Panel: A conjoint experiment in Brazil, Germany, and the United States
Using data from a conjoint experiment in three countries (Brazil, n = 2038; Germany, n = 2012, and the United States, n = 2005), this study demonstrates that journalistic transparency can cue trust at the level of the entire news outlet—or domain level—using a Google Knowledge Panel that comes up when people search for a news outlet. In Brazil and the United States, two pieces of information in a Knowledge Panel provided the strongest heuristics …
What Social Media Could Be: Normative Frameworks for Evaluating Digital Public Spaces
Increasing attention has been placed to the societal downsides of social media, and appropriately so. Less attention has been paid to the qualities to which social media should aspire. We contend that this is critically important. Not only must social media, and social media scholars, identify and reduce negative outcomes, but we must also critically engage with what is desirable. The purpose of this theoretical essay is to propose a normative fr…
News Engagement: The Roles of Technological Affordance, Emotion, and Social Endorsement
The ways in which audiences engage and interact with news has flourished thanks to the proliferation of digital platforms (Park, Fisher, Lee, et al. 2020). Our ever-changing media environment has l
The Effectiveness of Gain and Loss Frames in News Subscription Appeals
Subscriptions are an increasingly vital part of newsrooms’ business models as the industry experiences sharp declines in advertising revenue. To date, research has not examined how digital subscription appeals affect news subscription intentions. The current study investigates the effectiveness of gain- and loss-framed messages on clicking on subscription appeals, connecting literature on prospect theory and investigations into why people use new…
Asymmetric adjustment: Partisanship and correcting misinformation on Facebook
Across two studies, we test two of Facebook’s attempts to fight misinformation: labeling misinformation as disputed or false and including fact checks as related articles. We propose hypotheses based on a two-step model of motivated reasoning, which provides insight into how misinformation is corrected. For study 1 ( n = 1,262) and study 2 ( n = 1,586), we created a mock Facebook News Feed consisting of five different articles—four were actual ne…
Pathways to Deeper News Engagement: Factors Influencing Click Behaviors on News Sites
This study draws on models of motivated news exposure and literature on affordances to examine how devices (i.e., PC or mobile) and paths to exposure (i.e., news homepages, search, or social referrals) relate to people’s behavior on news sites. Using behavioral data from seven local broadcast news sites, we assess how the device used and referral site affect whether people click on links to more news. We experimentally test four components of the…
The Effects of Mobile Push Notifications on News Consumption and Learning
A number of mobile news apps deploy push notifications that appear on users’ locked screens and alert users to breaking news. Push notifications are theoretically important because they transcend the traditional divide between purposeful and incidental news exposure. We analyze whether push notifications affect people’s reported use of a news app and what people learn about the news. In this paper, we report on the results of a 2 (install the CNN…
Assessing the External Validity of Using News Websites as Experimental Stimuli
As news is increasingly distributed online, studies of how people behave on news websites have become important tools in understanding news exposure. Numerous studies have created websites as stimuli, asked experimental subjects to browse the website, then inferred that their behavior in the experimental context resembles their behavior in a natural setting. The external validity of these studies, or the degree to which online behavior in an expe…
How News Images Affect Clicking on Subscription Appeals
The newspaper industry’s business model increasingly relies on subscriptions as a means of revenue. Little scholarly research has examined what characteristics of subscription appeals make them more or less successful, although prior research on news attention proposes that negative images may be more successful whereas digital advertising research suggests the benefits of positive images. In 10 tests with three newsroom partners, we experimental…
The Effects of News Site Design on Engagement and Learning
Several news websites have adopted a homepage design that emphasizes the reduction of visual clutter and the limiting of prominence cues. We examine how site design affects news engagement and what people learn from the news. Across three experiments conducted in the U.S., we provide evidence that a more contemporary, visual-based, grid-like design enhances page views and learning from the articles compared to a more classic, text-based, hierarch…
Enacted Journalism Takes the Stage: How Audiences Respond to Reporting-Based Theater
In a media environment where content far exceeds what people can pay attention to, news organizations have experimented with different ways of informing and engaging audiences. This article focuses on a face-to-face endeavor we term “enacted journalism”—reporting-based live-theater performances followed by conversation. Theoretically, we draw from literature on theater, journalism, and political communication to develop the concept of “enacted jo…
The effect of news labels on perceived credibility
Two online experiments examined whether news labels attract reader attention and affect news story credibility. Both studies showed that labels garner little attention from newsreaders and do not influence perceptions of news story credibility. However, Study 2 demonstrated that a label that explained the type of news story produced better recall of labels and more accurate recommendations of what the label should be. Findings suggest that if lab…
Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure
Changing Deliberative Norms on News Organizations' Facebook Sites
Comments posted to news sites do not always live up to the ideals of deliberative theorists. Drawing from theories about deliberation and group norms, this study investigates whether news organizations can affect comment section norms by engaging directly with commenters. We conducted a field study with a local television station in a top-50 Designated Market Area. For 70 political posts made on different days, we randomized whether an unidentifi…
Media Effects, Selective Exposure, andFahrenheit 9/11
With increasing media choice and diverse media outlets, people have more opportunities to engage in selective exposure. The present study investigates this phenomenon by looking at the widely viewed anti–President George W. Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Using survey data gathered from a national sample before and after the opening of Fahrenheit 9/11, this study investigates the degree of selective exposure and the potential media effects occu…
(Re)Claiming Our Expertise: Parsing Large Text Corpora With Manually Validated and Organic Dictionaries
Content analysis of large-scale textual data sets poses myriad problems, particularly when researchers seek to analyze content that is both theoretically derived and context dependent. In this piece, we detail the approach we developed to tackle the analysis of the context-dependent content of political incivility. After describing our manually validated organic dictionaries approach, we compare the method to others we could have used and then re…
Partisan News and Political Participation: Exploring Mediated Relationships
This study examines mediators of the relationship between news consumption and political participation in the contemporary news environment. We test the differential effects exerted by pro- and counter-attitudinal news compared with balanced news on intended participation. Our primary objective is to model three paths that may link news exposure and participation: cognitive (i.e., perceived issue understanding), affective (i.e., emotions evoked b…
The effects of journalistic transparency on credibility assessments and engagement intentions
Transparency is an oft-cited remedy for the public’s lack of confidence in the news media. Yet scant empirical evidence exists to support this claim. This article presents a test of the relationship between increased journalistic transparency and credibility evaluations of a news organization. Experimental results suggest that increasing transparency (by providing news consumers with information about why and how a story was written, details abou…
Assessing Selective Exposure in Experiments: The Implications of Different Methodological Choices
Selective exposure has been studied for more than half a century, but little research has systematically analyzed the implications of various methodological choices inherent in these designs. We examine how four choices affect results in studies of selectivity in political contexts: including an entertainment option, including or excluding moderates, post-hoc adjustment of the subjects through a question about likelihood of selecting content in t…
Perceptions of Cable News Credibility
By analyzing variability in credibility assessments of news outlets CNN and FOX, this study extends prior research focusing on perceptions of credibility for a single media source. Using national survey data from 2006 and 2008, we find that demographic and political characteristics help to explain different patterns of perceived credibility. Those detecting larger differences between CNN and FOX are more politically knowledgeable and hold more po…
Attention as a Valuable Resource
Keeping up with the news and monitoring public affairs are typically considered civic obligations. Yet there is a great deal of competition for people’s limited attention. Some studies explore when people tune in to the news and what sorts of public affairs content attract our time, but these topics warrant more research. Scholars concerned with the news media’s political role must better understand what leads people to the news in the first plac…
The deliberative influence of comment section structure
Online news comment sections are a ubiquitous presence across media outlets. Although research has assessed both the content and effects of these comment spaces, little is known about how the structure of comment spaces influences news users’ online commentary. As democratic theorists argue, the structure of a communicative space can influence its deliberative quality. We conducted two separate experiments to determine how news comment section st…
Selective Exposure, Tolerance, and Satirical News
Journal Article Selective Exposure, Tolerance, and Satirical News Get access Natalie J. Stroud, Natalie J. Stroud 1Department of Communication Studies, University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA; 2Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA; 3Communication & Journalism Department, University of Wyoming, WY, USA Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an Assistant Professor in the Depar…
The Gender Gap in Online News Comment Sections
Women are less likely than men to discuss or engage in politics. This study extends research on the gender gap in politics to an online context by exploring whether women are less likely to engage in political discussion online, whether this follows socialization theories of a private versus public sphere distinction, and whether perceptions of incivility help to explain these gender differences. Through a survey of commenters and comment readers…
The Consequences of Forced Versus Selected Political Media Exposure
The effects of media exposure differ when people are given the opportunity to choose content compared to when they are forced to view it. Contemporary explanations propose that differences between forced and selected exposure occur because of between-subject differences. We propose that differences also result from within-subject psychological reactions. Using a novel experimental design, a representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 1,967) provide…
Exposure to Ideological News and Perceived Opinion Climate: Testing the Media Effects Component of Spiral-of-Silence in a Fragmented Media Landscape
Spiral-of-silence theory assumes that a monolithic stream of messages from mainstream media, leaving little ability for audiences to seek ideologically congruent news, affects people’s perceptions of the distribution of opinion in society. While these assumptions may have been valid when Noelle-Neumann developed her theory forty years ago, the new media landscape, characterized by the proliferation of ideological media outlets, makes them seem ou…
Public Attitudes toward Polls: Evidence from the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election
This study investigates the perceived impact of election polls, focusing on the hotly contested 2000 U.S. presidential election. Survey data from 558 individuals gathered during the final days of the election campaign are analyzed to examine beliefs that the polls greatly affect other voters, general views of polls as good or bad for the country, beliefs about whether pollsters influence their results to come out a certain way, and support for ba…
Like, recommend, or respect? Altering political behavior in news comment sections
Drawing from the stereotype content model, we examine how people respond to likeminded and counter-attitudinal political comments appearing after a news article. We experimentally test how citizens behave when they are able to click on one of three different buttons posted next to others’ comments—“Like,” “Recommend,” or “Respect.” In the experiment, political attitudes predicted button clicking, but the button label affected the strength of the …
The effect of news labels on perceived credibility
Two online experiments examined whether news labels attract reader attention and affect news story credibility. Both studies showed that labels garner little attention from newsreaders and do not influence perceptions of news story credibility. However, Study 2 demonstrated that a label that explained the type of news story produced better recall of labels and more accurate recommendations of what the label should be. Findings suggest that if lab…
Who Watches Presidential Debates? A Comparative Analysis of Presidential Debate Viewing in 2000 and 2004
Presidential debates are a main feature of present-day presidential campaigns. For voters, they are a source of political learning about candidate issue positions. Fluctuations in the level of debate viewership from election to election and, within an election, from debate to debate invite the following questions: What is the composition of debate audiences? In what ways did the audiences in 2004 differ from 2000? In what ways did the audiences c…
Asymmetric adjustment: Partisanship and correcting misinformation on Facebook
Across two studies, we test two of Facebook’s attempts to fight misinformation: labeling misinformation as disputed or false and including fact checks as related articles. We propose hypotheses based on a two-step model of motivated reasoning, which provides insight into how misinformation is corrected. For study 1 ( n = 1,262) and study 2 ( n = 1,586), we created a mock Facebook News Feed consisting of five different articles—four were actual ne…
Partisan Memes as a Catalyst for Homophilous Networks
Although diverse political networks are seen as democratically valuable, online social networks enable the construction and maintenance of networks that are less diverse. In this study, we explore the cultivation of like-minded networks through blocking those sharing counter-attitudinal partisan memes and engaging with pro-attitudinal partisan memes. We then test the efficacy of an intervention to reduce the spread of homophily-inducing partisan …
We Should Not Get Rid of Incivility Online
Incivility and toxicity have become concepts du jour in research about social media. The clear normative implication in much of this research is that incivility is bad and should be eliminated. Extensive research-including some that we've authored-has been dedicated to finding ways to reduce or eliminate incivility from online discussion spaces. In our work as part of the Civic Signals Initiative, we've been thinking carefully about what metrics …
From Agenda Setting to Refusal Setting: Survey Nonresponse as a Function of Media Coverage Across the 2004 Election Cycle
Past research suggests that there is a relationship between survey response and topic salience, namely that individuals responding to a survey are likely to find the survey topic more salient than nonrespondents do. For election surveys, nonresponse resulting from a lack of salience can influence findings because respondents may be more interested in politics than nonrespondents. The agenda-setting model suggests that media coverage should height…
Pathways to Deeper News Engagement: Factors Influencing Click Behaviors on News Sites
This study draws on models of motivated news exposure and literature on affordances to examine how devices (i.e., PC or mobile) and paths to exposure (i.e., news homepages, search, or social referrals) relate to people’s behavior on news sites. Using behavioral data from seven local broadcast news sites, we assess how the device used and referral site affect whether people click on links to more news. We experimentally test four components of the…
Enacted Journalism Takes the Stage: How Audiences Respond to Reporting-Based Theater
In a media environment where content far exceeds what people can pay attention to, news organizations have experimented with different ways of informing and engaging audiences. This article focuses on a face-to-face endeavor we term “enacted journalism”—reporting-based live-theater performances followed by conversation. Theoretically, we draw from literature on theater, journalism, and political communication to develop the concept of “enacted jo…
What Social Media Could Be: Normative Frameworks for Evaluating Digital Public Spaces
Increasing attention has been placed to the societal downsides of social media, and appropriately so. Less attention has been paid to the qualities to which social media should aspire. We contend that this is critically important. Not only must social media, and social media scholars, identify and reduce negative outcomes, but we must also critically engage with what is desirable. The purpose of this theoretical essay is to propose a normative fr…
Public Attitudes toward Polls: Evidence from the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election
This study investigates the perceived impact of election polls, focusing on the hotly contested 2000 U.S. presidential election. Survey data from 558 individuals gathered during the final days of the election campaign are analyzed to examine beliefs that the polls greatly affect other voters, general views of polls as good or bad for the country, beliefs about whether pollsters influence their results to come out a certain way, and support for ba…
Who Watches Presidential Debates? A Comparative Analysis of Presidential Debate Viewing in 2000 and 2004
Presidential debates are a main feature of present-day presidential campaigns. For voters, they are a source of political learning about candidate issue positions. Fluctuations in the level of debate viewership from election to election and, within an election, from debate to debate invite the following questions: What is the composition of debate audiences? In what ways did the audiences in 2004 differ from 2000? In what ways did the audiences c…
Connections Between Internet Use and Political Efficacy, Knowledge, and Participation
Using data from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey, this study looks at the relationships between Internet access and online exposure to information about the presidential campaign and political efficacy, knowledge, and participation. Results show that Internet access and online exposure to information about the presidential campaign are significantly associated with these important political variables. Several of the associations betwee…
Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen
A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen focuses on understanding citizen engagement and how it differs between generations. To accomplish this formidable task, Zukin, Keeter, Andolina, Jenkins, and Delli Carpini compare four different cohorts: Dutifuls (born before 1946), Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), GenXers (born between 1965 and 1976), and DotNets (born after 1976). Chronicling gene…
From Agenda Setting to Refusal Setting: Survey Nonresponse as a Function of Media Coverage Across the 2004 Election Cycle
Past research suggests that there is a relationship between survey response and topic salience, namely that individuals responding to a survey are likely to find the survey topic more salient than nonrespondents do. For election surveys, nonresponse resulting from a lack of salience can influence findings because respondents may be more interested in politics than nonrespondents. The agenda-setting model suggests that media coverage should height…
Media Effects, Selective Exposure, andFahrenheit 9/11
With increasing media choice and diverse media outlets, people have more opportunities to engage in selective exposure. The present study investigates this phenomenon by looking at the widely viewed anti–President George W. Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Using survey data gathered from a national sample before and after the opening of Fahrenheit 9/11, this study investigates the degree of selective exposure and the potential media effects occu…
Video Games and the ESRB: An evaluation of parental beliefs about the rating system
Video games are a popular form of children's entertainment in the United States. As of 2004, approximately 83 percent of homes with children between the ages of 8 and 18 had video game consoles, an
Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure
Polarization and Partisan Selective Exposure
Today, people can easily select media outlets sharing their political predispositions, a behavior known as partisan selective exposure. Additional research is needed, however, to better understand the causes and consequences of partisan selective exposure. This study investigates the relationship between partisan selective exposure and political polarization using data from the National Annenberg Election Survey. Cross-sectional results show stro…
Niche News: The Politics of News Choice
Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Rush Limbaugh Show, National Public Radio—a list of available political media sources could continue without any apparent end. This book investigates how people navigate these choices. It asks whether people are using media sources that express political views matching their own, a behavior known as partisan selective exposure. By looking at newspaper, cable news, news magazine, ta…
Assessing Public Opinion After 9/11 and Before the Iraq War
This study evaluates the frequency with which polls about Iraq and terrorism were fielded and reported in the media between September 11, 2001 and October 11, 2002. A content analysis of 4,481 poll questions and 4,964 references to poll-based public opinion in the media was conducted. There are strong relationships between media coverage of public opinion and the assessment of public opinion via polls. This study also examines whether the frequen…
The Influence of Debate Viewing Context on Political Cynicism and Strategic Interpretations
In 2008, Nielsen Media Research reported that between 50 million and 70 million people watched each of the presidential and vice presidential debates. Although the debates are some of the most-watched political moments, the influence of the context of debate viewing has received little attention. This study focuses on the reactions of younger Americans to watching the debates in different contexts. In particular, the authors consider the influenc…
The Influence of President Obama’s, Middle Name on Middle Eastern and U.S. Perceptions
Exposure to Ideological News and Perceived Opinion Climate: Testing the Media Effects Component of Spiral-of-Silence in a Fragmented Media Landscape
Spiral-of-silence theory assumes that a monolithic stream of messages from mainstream media, leaving little ability for audiences to seek ideologically congruent news, affects people’s perceptions of the distribution of opinion in society. While these assumptions may have been valid when Noelle-Neumann developed her theory forty years ago, the new media landscape, characterized by the proliferation of ideological media outlets, makes them seem ou…
Assessing Selective Exposure in Experiments: The Implications of Different Methodological Choices
Selective exposure has been studied for more than half a century, but little research has systematically analyzed the implications of various methodological choices inherent in these designs. We examine how four choices affect results in studies of selectivity in political contexts: including an entertainment option, including or excluding moderates, post-hoc adjustment of the subjects through a question about likelihood of selecting content in t…
Perceptions of Cable News Credibility
By analyzing variability in credibility assessments of news outlets CNN and FOX, this study extends prior research focusing on perceptions of credibility for a single media source. Using national survey data from 2006 and 2008, we find that demographic and political characteristics help to explain different patterns of perceived credibility. Those detecting larger differences between CNN and FOX are more politically knowledgeable and hold more po…
Selective Exposure, Tolerance, and Satirical News
Journal Article Selective Exposure, Tolerance, and Satirical News Get access Natalie J. Stroud, Natalie J. Stroud 1Department of Communication Studies, University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA; 2Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA; 3Communication & Journalism Department, University of Wyoming, WY, USA Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an Assistant Professor in the Depar…
Partisan Paths to Exposure Diversity: Differences in Pro- and Counterattitudinal News Consumption
This study examines selective exposure to political information, arguing that attraction to proattitudinal information and aversion to counterattitudinal information are distinct phenomena, and that the tendency to engage in these behaviors varies by partisanship. Data collected in a strict online experiment support these predictions. Republicans are significantly more likely to engage in selective avoidance of predominantly counterattitudinal in…
Seeing Media as Group Members: An Evaluation of Partisan Bias Perceptions
Drawing upon research on ingroup and outgroup perceptions, 2 studies examine citizen perceptions of media bias. Study 1 examines how citizens think about media bias across multiple sources. Consistent with the phenomenon of outgroup homogeneity, citizens' political leanings influence how much variation they perceive; politically dissimilar media are seen as having a more uniform partisan bias and politically similar media are seen as having more …
Changing Deliberative Norms on News Organizations' Facebook Sites
Comments posted to news sites do not always live up to the ideals of deliberative theorists. Drawing from theories about deliberation and group norms, this study investigates whether news organizations can affect comment section norms by engaging directly with commenters. We conducted a field study with a local television station in a top-50 Designated Market Area. For 70 political posts made on different days, we randomized whether an unidentifi…
Solutions to Political Polarization in America
Political polarization dominates discussions of contemporary American politics. Despite widespread agreement that the dysfunction in the political system can be attributed to political polarization, commentators cannot come to a consensus on what that means. The coarseness of our political discourse, the ideological distance between opposing partisans, and, most of all, an inability to pass much-needed and widely supported policies all stem from …
The influence of online quizzes on the acquisition of public affairs knowledge
Drawing from a “mix of attributes” approach, this study analyzes whether interactive online news quizzes engage site visitors and help individuals acquire news knowledge. Results of a nationwide experiment (n = 456) indicate that online quizzes, whether using a multiple-choice or slider format, help citizens acquire public affairs knowledge and lead them to spend more time with public affairs information relative to presenting information without…
Like, recommend, or respect? Altering political behavior in news comment sections
Drawing from the stereotype content model, we examine how people respond to likeminded and counter-attitudinal political comments appearing after a news article. We experimentally test how citizens behave when they are able to click on one of three different buttons posted next to others’ comments—“Like,” “Recommend,” or “Respect.” In the experiment, political attitudes predicted button clicking, but the button label affected the strength of the …
Partisan News and Political Participation: Exploring Mediated Relationships
This study examines mediators of the relationship between news consumption and political participation in the contemporary news environment. We test the differential effects exerted by pro- and counter-attitudinal news compared with balanced news on intended participation. Our primary objective is to model three paths that may link news exposure and participation: cognitive (i.e., perceived issue understanding), affective (i.e., emotions evoked b…
Understanding and Overcoming Selective Exposure and Judgment When Communicating About Science
Before turning to an evaluation of strategies to overcome selective exposure and judgment, this chapter demonstrates that these selectivity processes occur with respect to science but not in all circumstances. Strategies to curb the occurrence of selectivity are discussed based on the information conveyed and the motivational state of a person encountering scientific information. Theories and research on accountability to others, anxiety, self-af…
Political science (52 works) · Social Media and Politics (46 works) · Psychology (43 works) · Sociology (35 works) · Politics (31 works) · Media Studies and Communication (29 works) · Law (28 works) · Computer Science (25 works) · Social Psychology (24 works) · Public relations (22 works)