Abstract
ABSTRACTJournalists and scholars are increasingly wary of widespread uncivil users’ comments, and their harmful effects on news credibility. Applying a social identity approach, this study examined how uncivil intergroup comments, as a cue for intergroup comparison, influenced the effect of political identity on partisans’ perception of news bias, which is known as hostile media effect (HME). Results from a web-based experiment showed that the effects of party identity strength on participants’ identity salience, ingroup bias in argument evaluations, and perceptions of news bias were significantly greater when participants were exposed to uncivil intergroup comments, than when they were exposed to civil comments. Consistent with self-categorization theory, the effect of partisanship on HME was mediated by identity salience and ingroup bias sequentially, and the mediation effect was greater in the uncivil intergroup comments condition than the civil condition. This suggests that HME reflects a form of ingroup bias, resulting from context-dependent social categorization.
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