Hostile Media Research Articles

Hostile social media harassment: A machine learning framework for filtering anti-female jokes

Drawing motivation from the non-existing computational criteria that blocks abusive contents targeted at female folks on social media from weird contents capable of hurting, offending, or intimidating the feelings; we present a machine learning framework for an intelligent filtering of information regarding anti-female jokes on social media discourse using multi-class classification. Our framework trains, validates and test neural network algorithm with data set sourced from chat rooms on social media handles with the goal of detecting and filtering expression(s) available in online jokes defined in terms of harsh, mild and neutral anti-female jokes. During implementation, the prototyped model recorded a performance accuracy of 92.9 %. This performance though high with the available limited data set is yet to attain the desired level of accuracy due to lack of consistent rules that distinguish various classes of anti-female jokes. In future, this model will be deployed to achieve unhindered discourse on social media by implementing an intelligent filtering system that could identify, classify and block unwanted contents.

Facebook Comments Influence Perceptions of Journalistic Bias: Testing Hostile Media Bias in the COVID-19 Social Media Environment

News organizations increasingly use Facebook to expand their reach and foster audience engagement. However, this free platform exposes news audiences to user comments before accessing and reading news articles. This exposure shapes the visible opinion climate and has the potential to influence readers. Through the application of the hostile media bias hypothesis, the influence of Facebook comments on COVID-19 related news articles and a knowledge-based assessment on perceptions of news bias and credibility are tested using a nationwide sample of Facebook users (N = 450). Findings show that user comments enhance negative perceptions of bias and diminish perceptions of favorability. The ability for knowledge-based assessments to alleviate this negative influence may induce reactance and needs further investigation.

A Vicious Cycle? Threat of Terror, Perceived Media Bias, and Support for Surveillance Policies

Islamist terrorist attacks and existing terror threat can seriously affect intergroup relations and policy making. Drawing on hostile media effect theory and intergroup threat theory, we hypothesized that perceived threat of terror influences perceived news media bias in favor of Muslims as well as support for surveillance policies that are perceived to be restrictive for Muslims. In addition, we assumed that media bias positively predicts surveillance policy support. Results of a quota-based two-wave panel survey (N T2 = 524) revealed that perceived threat of terror increased perceived media bias in favor of Muslims over time, but did not have a direct effect over time on support for surveillance policies. However, perceived media bias was found to be a positive predictor of support for surveillance policies over time. In addition, support for policies was a positive predictor of perceived terror threat over time, suggesting a vicious cycle.

‘Not just theatre, also politics, law’: on dramaturgical ethics and collective playwriting in Deportation Centre Sjælsmark

ABSTRACT This article reflects on the ethics and process of writing and performing the play This Is Us with a group of rejected asylum seekers from Deportation Centre Sjælsmark in Denmark. Positioned within larger frameworks of political and media hostility, the group pushed for a more radical approach of ‘not just theatre’, but called instead for solidarity within and beyond moments of collective writing. From this process, ‘dramaturgical ethics’ arose as an aesthetic and ethical practice, which can support thinking through responsibilities and relationalities involved in research, theatre making and entering into the world together.

Does Fatigue from Ongoing News Issues Harm News Media? Assessing Reciprocal Relationships Between Audience Issue Fatigue and News Media Evaluations

ABSTRACT News media covers certain political issues extensively for weeks or months at a time, leading users to become fatigued, avoiding them altogether. Against the background of increasing distrust in and tune out of news media observed in several countries, this study investigates the role of fatigue from ongoing news issues for how audiences evaluate news media. It examines reciprocal causal relations between news users’ fatigue from ongoing news issues and their evaluations of news media with focus on the Brexit issue. A three-wave panel survey was conducted in Switzerland from April 11 to June 11, 2019. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models show that issue fatigue leads to negative evaluations of an issue’s media coverage and vice versa. However, issue fatigue does not predict negative news coverage evaluations in general and hostile media perceptions. Implications of ongoing news issues on news media evaluations are discussed, considering citizens’ attachment to news media faltering in today’s news environment.

When CNN Praises Trump: Effects of Content and Source on Hostile Media Perception

Research on hostile media perception (HMP) has suggested that both news slants and partisan source cues influence individuals’ perception of news bias. Yet, relatively little attention has been paid to the possibility that the two message features may interact. Extending the literature on HMP, the present experiment investigates the content-source interaction in the context of President Trump’s policy on immigration, with two audience characteristics as potential moderators: political ideology strength (PIS) and need for cognition (NFC). Results show that (1) the effect of news slants on HMP is greater when the news is from an in-group source and (2) such interaction is more pronounced for those with higher levels of PIS and lower levels of NFC. Implications for our understanding of HMP and for public opinion in an increasingly fragmented and partisan media environment will be discussed.

Do Hostile Media Perceptions Constrain Minipublics? A Study of How Oregon Voters Perceive Citizens' Statements

The deliberative quality of a minipublic often depends on its ability to inform the opinions of a larger public. The Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) aims to do so by producing a Citizens’ Statement, which we conceptualize as a deliberative form of mass media. Like any mass media, this Statement can only influence public opinion to the extent that citizens consider it unbiased and credible. Hostile media perceptions often prevent favorable evaluations of media content, but no prior work has considered whether these perceptions could undermine the output of deliberative minipublics. To examine that possibility, we analyze online survey data on Oregon voters’ assessments of two 2014 Citizens’ Statements. Results showed that voters’ evaluations of the Statements were unaffected by hostile media perceptions. Assessments were more favorable when voters had confidence in their knowledge of the CIR’s design, process, and participants. Evaluations also were more favorable for those voters with greater faith in deliberation’s capacity to render considered judgments. We elaborate on these findings in our discussion section and consider their theoretical and practical implications for implementing minipublics and bolstering their deliberative quality.

Acculturation, Bilateral Hostility, and Psychological Wellbeing of U.S.-dwelling Chinese during the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked hostility against Chinese immigrants and sojourners in the U.S. and other countries. Making the situation worse, strong resentment against this group has also emerged in China due to the fear of returnees spreading the disease. Integrating research on acculturation and hostile media perception, we examined how such bilateral hostility along with different acculturation components (i.e., cultural identification, COVID-19-related media use, and individualistic-collectivistic value) influenced U.S.-dwelling Chinese’s psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the results from a two-wave survey assessing the cultural identity and value, COVID-19-related media use, and psychological distress of a group of relatively young and highly educated U.S.-dwelling Chinese (N = 1,256) between March and April 2020, we found that identification with both U.S. and Chinese cultures alleviated immigrants and sojourners’ psychological distress. Further, COVID-19-related media use served as a stressor during the pandemic, and perceived hostility from China led to stronger psychological distress among U.S.-dwelling Chinese.

Algorithmic or Human Source? Examining Relative Hostile Media Effect With a Transformer-Based Framework

The relative hostile media effect suggests that partisans tend to perceive the bias of slanted news differently depending on whether the news is slanted in favor of or against their sides. To explore the effect of an algorithmic vs. human source on hostile media perceptions, this study conducts a 3 (author attribution: human, algorithm, or human-assisted algorithm) x 3 (news attitude: pro-issue, neutral, or anti-issue) mixed factorial design online experiment (<em>N</em> = 511). This study uses a transformer-based adversarial network to auto-generate comparable news headlines. The framework was trained with a dataset of 364,986 news stories from 22 mainstream media outlets. The results show that the relative hostile media effect occurs when people read news headlines attributed to all types of authors. News attributed to a sole human source is perceived as more credible than news attributed to two algorithm-related sources. For anti-Trump news headlines, there exists an interaction effect between author attribution and issue partisanship while controlling for people’s prior belief in machine heuristics. The difference of hostile media perceptions between the two partisan groups was relatively larger in anti-Trump news headlines compared with pro-Trump news headlines.

Mask on while Asian: how media use, hostile media perceptions, and alienation influence U.S.-Dwelling Chinese’s protective behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT As the coronavirus spreads across the globe, xenophobia and racism against Chinese and Asians at large are also surging. In a two-wave survey, we focused on U.S.-dwelling Chinese (N = 1,256), a minority group that was targeted by racial discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated the relationships among a number of media and perceptual factors related to this group at Wave 1 and how these factors predicted the adoption of a wide range of protective behaviors (i.e., disease prevention, safety enhancement, donation, and going back to China) at Wave 2. Overall, our proposed model depicting the relationships among host country and country of origin media use, hostile media perceptions and alienation was largely supported by the data. Our results also showed how these factors predicted actual behaviors. The findings provide important contributions to both theory and practice in multiple ways.

Whose media are hostile? The spillover effect of interpersonal discussions on media bias perceptions

AbstractSince Eveland and Shah (2003) published their seminal study on the impact of social networks on media bias perceptions in the US, little has been researched about the interpersonal antecedents of hostile media perceptions. In this study we address this gap by investigating the role of safe, or like-minded, political discussions on individuals’ likelihood to perceive media as hostile. We use survey data from more than 5,000 individuals in Germany. Our findings reveal that like-minded discussions increase one’s likelihood to perceive media as hostile; yet, only among those more politically engaged and ideologically on the left. The significance and theoretical implications of the results are discussed in the concluding section.

The Hostile Mediator Phenomenon

Abstract Rival partisans tend to perceive ostensibly balanced news coverage as biased against their respective sides; this is known as the “hostile media phenomenon” (HMP). Yet complaints of hostile bias are common in contexts besides the media (e.g., law enforcement and academia). Does a process similar to the HMP occur outside the context of news coverage? And do perceptions of political bias in different contexts share certain similarities? This paper proposes that the HMP is a specific case of a more general hostile mediator phenomenon, where rival partisans perceive various public institutions and organizations that are expected to be neutral as biased against their respective sides. The paper starts by presenting a theoretical framework according to which partisans’ bias perceptions are affected by the threat to the power and status of their ingroup posed by a mediator’s actions. Evidence from three studies (total N = 4,164) shows that members of rival ideological camps in Israel perceived the Israeli attorney general and the Israeli police to be biased against their respective camps. An additional study (N = 2,172) shows that both Democrats and Republicans perceived the social network Facebook to be biased against their side. Moreover, an embedded, pre-registered survey experiment buttresses the causal claim that ingroup-threatening information increases perceptions of hostile bias. The implications of these findings for our understanding of people’s bias perceptions, as well as for citizens’ trust in public institutions and democratic stability more generally, are discussed.

The Impact of the Media on Tourism Development and Income Inequality

This paper examines whether the relationship between tourism development and income inequality is sensitive to the media environment. Using panel data of 88 countries for the period 1996 to 2020, we find that countries that have uncensored media environments experience lower income inequality as the tourism industry develops. We also find that a favourable media environment enhances tourism development. Further analysis shows that asymmetries in a hostile media environment; namely, media biasedness, media corruption, and harassment of journalists inhibit tourism development, particularly in emerging countries. The paper calls for strong support for press freedom to develop the tourism industry as countries emerge from the adverse effects of COVID-19 pandemic.

Social media users (under)appreciate the news: An application of hostile media bias to news disseminated on Facebook

News outlets rely on social media to freely distribute content, offering a venue for users to comment on news. This exposes individuals to user comments prior to reading news articles, which can influence perceptions of news content. A 2 × 2 between-subject experiment (N = 690) tested the hostile media bias theory via the influence of comments seen before viewing a news story on perceptions of bias and credibility. Results show that user comments induce hostile media perceptions.

스포츠 경기 중계방송에 대한 적대적 매체 효과와 정체성

이 연구에서는 이민자들의 정체성이 국가 간 스포츠 경기 중계방송에 대한 적대적 매체 효과에 미치는 영향을 살펴보기 위해, 국내에 거주하고 있는 한국계 중국인을 대상으로 온라인 실험을 실시했다. 연구결과, 응답자들은 국가정체성을 기준으로 외집단 매체의 중계방송이 내집단 매체의 중계방송 대비 더 외집단에 유리하게 치우쳤다고 인식하는 적대적 매체 지각을 나타냈다. 이러한 적대적 매체 지각이 클수록 내집단 선수를 응원할 확률이 높은 것으로 나타났다. 그러나 외집단 매체의 스포츠 경기 중계방송이 내집단 매체의 중계방송 대비 더 외집단에 유리하게 치우쳤다는 적대적 매체 지각이 클수록 내집단 선수를 응원할 확률이 높아지는 현상은 국가정체성이 상대적으로 약한 이중정체성이 현저한 응답자들 가운데에서만 나타났다. 연구 결과의 함의와 연구의 한계를 논의에 포함한다.

The Str(AI)ght Scoop: Artificial Intelligence Cues Reduce Perceptions of Hostile Media Bias

In the face of increasing public distrust for journalistic institutions, stories sourced from artificially intelligent (AI) journalists have the potential to lower hostile media bias by activating the machine heuristic—a mental shortcut assuming machines are more unbiased, systematic, and accurate than are humans. An online experiment targeting issue partisans found support for the prediction: a story presented as sourced from an AI journalist activated the machine heuristic that, in turn, mitigated hostile media bias. This mediation effect was moderated: perceived bias was more strongly reduced as partisan-attitude extremity increased.

Hostile Media Perception on Twitter: The Effect of Mediated Social Identity Cues on Biased Perception

ABSTRACT Partisans tend to view the news as biased against them, an effect believed to be driven in part by social identity. As Twitter comments contain cues that signal group identity, this preregistered study examines the effects of comment identity on hostile media perception (HMP). Across two experiments comment identity was manipulated. Results were mixed. Outgroup comments amplified HMP, moderated by audience position; yet this finding was not replicated. Second, audience position accounted for differences in HMP, which runs counter to the original conceptualization. Results are discussed concerning self-categorization and biased perception of news media.

Facebook News Sharing, Hostile Perceptions of News Content, and Political Participation

This study explored Facebook users’ hostile perceptions of shared news content and its relationship with their political participation. This study conducted an online experiment with a 3 (news slant: pro-attitudinal, neutral, counter-attitudinal) × 3 (news sharer: in-group, neutral, out-group) between-subjects design. This experiment was administered in the context of the abortion issue in South Korea. Consistent with the hostile media effect, the news slant (pro-attitudinal, counter-attitudinal) of shared news content was found to influence Facebook users’ hostile perceptions of shared news content. Out-group sharers also significantly affected their hostile perceptions of shared news content. However, in-group sharers did not. Furthermore, the effect of Facebook users’ hostile perceptions of shared news content on their willingness for political participation was moderated by their prior minority perception in the general society. Only for Facebook users with high levels of prior minority perception in the general society, their hostile perceptions of shared news content appeared to encourage their political engagement. The implications of these findings were discussed.

News consumption and affective polarization in Taiwan: The mediating roles of like-minded discussion and relative hostile media perception

ABSTRACT This study examines the mediating roles of like-minded discussion and the perceived hostility gap of partisan news in the relationship between news consumption and affective polarization. Consistent with the filter-hypothesis of interpersonal communication and the relative hostile media framework, the results indicate that news consumption encourages individuals to engage in like-minded discussions, which in turn leads to stronger relative hostile media perception and the subsequent affective polarization. We discuss the implications in terms of how news media use and interpersonal discussion may work jointly to affect political polarization in an emerging democratic society.

The Power of a Genre: Political News Presented as Fact-Checking Increases Accurate Belief Updating and Hostile Media Perceptions

ABSTRACT Concerns over misinformation have inspired research on how people are influenced by, and form perceptions of, media messages that aim to correct false claims. We juxtapose two seemingly incongruent expectations from the theories of motivated reasoning and hostile media perceptions, uncovering the unique effects of presenting a political news story with corrective information as a “fact-check.” We test our theoretical expectations through two online survey experiments. We find that compared to a conventional style of news reporting, a news story presented in a fact-checking genre significantly increases how accurately people are able to evaluate factual information, but it also comes with an important counterproductive effect: people will be more likely to perceive the journalist and the story as biased. We discuss the implications of our findings in theorizing the persuasion effects of corrective information in the contemporary media environment.