Elaboration of the Hostile Media Phenomenon

Abstract

Hostile media perception (HMP) is a phenomenon showing the significance of individual factors in evaluation of media content. Extending theoretical understanding of HMP, this study has two purposes: (a) to examine the roles of different types of involvement in hostile media effect (HME), that is, value-relevant and outcome-relevant involvement, and (b) to explore relationships between HMP and other media-related perceptions, such as congruency of perceived media influence, media skepticism, and perceived opinion climate. Data were collected from college students in South Korea. Results suggest that value-relevant involvement, rather than outcome-relevant involvement, is a critical predictor of HMP in the context of news coverage of the National Security Law in Korea. HMP also was a significant predictor of congruency of presumed media influence, which in turn predicted perceived opinion climate.

A Three-Decade Retrospective on the Hostile Media Effect

“…However, without content analytic evidence that the news media in question are actually biased, one cannot know whether respondents' perceptions hew closer to distortion or accuracy. In addition, when respondents are asked if they perceive bias in the news media, we do not know if they are calling up a prototype of "the media" or generalized skepticism about media (Choi et al, 2009), or whether different groups of partisans even have the same news content in mind, a particular problem today in light of increasing ideological selectivity (Goldman & Mutz, 2011). And despite methodologically sophisticated data analytic techniques, the prosaic, but inevitable, problem of inferring causation from correlation remains.…”

“…Research has found that certain types of involvement -value-relevant involvement, along with affective involvement (e.g., emotional reactions about an issue) -influence hostile media perceptions (Choi, Yang, & Chang, 2009;Matthes, 2013).…”

News With an Attitude: Assessing the Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Opinionated News

“…The "Persuasive Press Inference" (Gunther, 1998) argues that exposure to mass media, opinionated news in particular, affects perceptions of public opinion (Gunther & Christen, 2002;Hwang, Pan, & Sun, 2008;Mutz & Soss, 1997), via a presumed media influence on others (Choi, Yang, & Chang, 2009;Gunther & Christen, 2002). Perceptions of the opinion climate are affected by expectations of presumed media influence, because people extrapolate the small sample of news they see to news more generally and assume that such news reaches many of their fellow citizens (Gunther, Christen, Liebhart, & Chia, 2001;Shen & Huggins, 2013).…”

Investigating the Impact of Message Format, Involvement, Scientific Literacy, and Education on Attitude Toward Reducing Cancer Risk Through Regulation

“…The study employed a reduced five-item version of the outcome involvement scale by Cho and Boster [18] as used in Choi, Yang, and Chang [24]. The questions were adapted to the topic of breast cancer and the environment (e.g., "All in all, the ways that the environment impacts my risk for breast cancer is important in my life").…”