Moral Foundations Theory Explains Differences in Appreciation of Slovenian Media

Abstract

Due to surprising results in the US elections and the Brexit referendum, media bias and quality have been in the spotlight. It has been suggested that the relation between bias and quality has a shape of an arc with high quality unbiased media at its apex. The questions addressed in this paper are: (1) can this relation between quality and bias be confirmed by empirical data and (2) is there a difference between the understanding of media between liberals (left) and the conservatives (right). In Slovenia, a survey was conducted, and people were asked to estimate country’s media according to its political profile and its quality. The results confirmed the arc-like relation between quality and bias very well. We found little difference among left, right and center respondents in how they ranked the media from left to right. However, we have found substantial differences among the quality ranking of the media. Most interestingly, the liberals established a linear relation between quality and bias – left media was automatically considered higher quality and right-wing media was automatically seen as poorer quality. On the other hand, this was much less present with the conservatives. The conservatives preserved the arc-like relation albeit skewed. One of the explanations could be the Moral Foundations Theory. Because of a lack of a wide moral foundation, the liberals find it harder to appreciate conservative media and simply equate conservative with bad. Because the conservatives’ moral foundations are wider, the understanding “the less media’s bias is like mine, less good it is” is not as pronounced. Further studies in other media environments would be needed to confirm this clam since the Slovenian media space has a few peculiarities.