Abstract
This study suggests a unified framework to examine the third-person perception (TPP) in the context of partisan news use. By amalgamating social identity theories with the elaboration likelihood model or the heuristic-systematic model, Study 1 investigates the role of message features (source cues and content slant), targets (in-group vs. out-group), and audience characteristics (political identity and elaboration) on TPP. Two online experiments conducted in the US and South Korea show that differences between pro- and counter-attitudinal content are larger when the target is an out-group member. TPP is also amplified when audiences have high elaboration. Study 2 explores the interplay between TPP and the hostile media phenomenon (HMP) on news sharing and commenting online. The result reveals that TPP reduces news sharing/commenting intention by decreasing perceptions of news quality. In addition, HMP strengthens the indirect effect of TPP on news sharing/commenting for out-group members, but mitigates it for in-group members.
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