If, indeed, "you are what you eat," how then are we influenced by what we consume from the news media? Should we be concerned if our news consumption is shaped by a few narrow interests, or a narrow range of viewpoints? David Tewksbury heads the department of communication at the University of Illinois and studies how people consume news, how news stories are framed, and how both influence political opinion. He was interviewed by News Bureau social sciences editor Craig Chamberlain.
The Internet allows us to follow our interests and get the news we want. This would seem to many a good thing.
Yes, it would. Some researchers think it might be trouble though. The older media, before cable television and the Internet, gave people relatively few options for where to go for news and entertainment. At the same time, though, news presentation through those media was relatively broad, covering a wide range of topics. The relatively small number of news outlets ensured that audiences were exposed to multiple topics, even if on only a shallow level.
Today, news presentation on the Internet allows people to spend lots of time with the news, if they wish, but also to focus on just a few topics. For example, we've seen sizable portions of the Internet audience use major news sites solely for sports news or celebrity information.
It turns out that if you let people make choices, they will often do that. Many of us hope they will choose news about government and public affairs, but they prefer news about other topics. Some observers liken the situation to choices we all make about food. We might know that we should eat spinach, but we might still choose a slice of cake instead.
We hear many accusations of partisan or political bias in the mainstream media, from both left and right. Where do you see bias? And is it always political bias?
Many researchers have noticed for some time that many people are rather poor judges of bias in the news. Interestingly, people on two very different sides of an issue looking at the same news story will say a story about the issue is biased against them.
I come away from the research literature with a very strong skepticism of claims of systematic bias in the mainstream media. Little of the news is as clearly biased as strong partisans - the ones who most frequently complain about bias - will tell you.
The exception would be the outlets I'd label as strategically partisan, such as MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and similar websites. I say they're strategically partisan because they package their news for partisan consumption, for economic rather than journalistic reasons. As a result, it may not be best to consider them part of the mainstream news media.
The mainstream media bias we often don't talk about is their tendency to favor those in power, regardless of their partisan stripes. Journalists rely on people in power - government and industry leaders, for example - for sources of news. As a result, these people tend to have more influence over the content and tone of the news than do other, less powerful, segments of society. The news media exhibit other biases, too, such as a preference for new, unusual, and salacious bits of information. On the whole, these nonpartisan biases exert a substantial influence on the news we receive.
The 2012 presidential race is under way, and accusations of bias are particularly strong sometimes in campaigns. What does research suggest about the perception and the reality?
Perception is an interesting thing. Most people who strongly support a candidate, policy or political ideology see bias in the news media. This happens on both sides of any political divide. Systematic analyses of election news coverage, however, typically find that overall patterns of campaign coverage are relatively balanced on a partisan level. Much of the news about campaigns focuses on the strategy behind campaigns, the inevitable errors and gaffes that candidates make, and who is ahead or behind in the polls.
If there is any clear bias in campaign reporting, it is a tendency for the news to run in favor of whoever is in the lead. News reports tend to talk about the campaign successes of front-runners and the errors of laggards. We saw that in the 2008 election over the last few weeks when much of the news coverage was of Obama's campaign organization and his lead in the polls.
So if you look at any one month in a campaign or at even any one election, it might appear as though one party or the other gets favorable treatment from the press. Systematic analyses of news coverage over time, however, show that it all tends to balance itself out. Whoever is ahead in the polls just tends to get more favorable coverage. Importantly, a lead in the polls precedes favorable coverage, at least initially. A swing in the favorability of coverage is the effect of a lead, not the reverse.
Partisan and ideologically driven sources of news and comment get a lot of attention. And our politics seem to grow only more polarized. Does research show any connection between the two?
There certainly are a good many partisan "news" outlets available today online and on cable television. We also are seeing electoral politics exhibit signs of substantial polarization. Most significantly, the number of true moderates in Congress is quickly shrinking.
Interestingly, however, there are very few academic studies that connect all of these dots. Researchers have demonstrated that the audiences of partisan cable outlets such as Fox News Channel and MSNBC are largely composed of partisans on the right and left, respectively. What we still lack are over-time studies that show whether exposure to a partisan outlet increases one's partisan tendencies. These are difficult studies to complete, so it may just be a matter of time before we have good evidence on this, one way or the other.