Drifting Further Apart? How Exposure to Media Portrayals of Muslims Affects Attitude Polarization

Abstract

Political discourses about Muslim immigration in the media and on social networking sites (SNSs) are highly contentious and have the potential to further polarize societal segments, which may ultimately harm democratic processes. Especially on SNSs, politicians and citizens can circumvent journalistic filters often resulting in blatant and emotionally charged content. Using a two-wave panel design (N = 559), we investigated how positive and negative portrayals of Muslims in traditional media outlets and on SNSs influence anti-Muslim immigration attitudes among people who either agree or disagree with the encountered information. Our findings indicate that exposure to negative portrayals further reinforces anti-Muslim immigration attitudes among those who agree with the encountered information. In contrast, for those who disagree with the negative information, a backfire effect emerges, showing that anti-Muslim attitudes even decrease. This effect occurs for both SNSs and traditional media. Positive information about Muslims did not result in attitude polarization.

Online Hate and Zeitgeist of Fear: A Five‐Country Longitudinal Analysis of Hate Exposure and Fear of Terrorism After the Paris Terrorist Attacks in 2015

“…In the current selective and identity‐driven social media, users tend to be critical towards online content they do not approve of (Bakshy, Messing, & Adamic, 2015; Zollo et al, 2017). Information that opposes users' attitudes and identity is likely to be downgraded or simply ignored (Karlsen, Steen‐Johnsen, Wollebæk, & Enjolras, 2017; Schmuck, Heiss, & Matthes, 2020). Thus, exposure to content that is identified as hateful and inappropriate (at odds with personal values) might not be very effective in directly influencing personal emotions or attitudes.…”

“…Thus, exposure to content that is identified as hateful and inappropriate (at odds with personal values) might not be very effective in directly influencing personal emotions or attitudes. Being exposed to worldview conflicting information may even “backfire” and strengthen preexisting attitudes (Karlsen et al, 2017; Lewandowsky, Stritzke, Freund, Oberauer, & Krueger, 2013; Schmuck et al, 2020).…”

“…Similarly, online hate content may at first be mainly shared by certain online communities but become more visible in everyday social media after terrorist attacks (Kaakinen et al, 2018; Williams & Burnap, 2016). When being exposed to material identified as hateful and inappropriate, users are not likely to experience higher fear of terrorism (Oksanen et al, 2020; Schmuck et al, 2020), but they are more likely to infer that the society is characterized by fear.…”

Assessing the Effect of Media Tone on Attitudes Toward Muslims: Evidence From an Online Experiment

“…So far there has been no systematic way to estimate how the degree of negativity influences attitudes. It has also been relatively uncommon for scholars to examine the effect of neutral or positive coverage on attitudes (though see Schemer (2012), van Klingeren et al (2015) and Schmuck et al (2020)). Moreover, because this research relies heavily on stereotypes as a marker of negativity, it is difficult to estimate the effect of article tone on less-marginalized groups to which negative stereotypes seldom apply 4…”

Atheism in US and UK Newspapers: Negativity about Non-Belief and Non-Believers

“…It is well-established that the media serve as an important source for public attitudes in general (Mastro and Tukachinsky 2014), as well as for attitudes towards specific religions in particular (e.g., Dick 2019;Saleem et al 2017;Schmuck et al 2020). Indeed, this is the case especially for religious groups with which most people in Western societies do not have much conscious personal interaction, such as Muslims or Mormons (Pew Research Center 2007).…”