The Influence of Unknown Media on Public Opinion: Evidence from Local and Foreign News Sources

Abstract

In the Internet era, people can encounter a vast array of political news outlets, many with which they are unfamiliar. These unknown media outlets are notable because they represent potential sources of misinformation and coverage with a distinctive slant. We use two large survey experiments to consider how source familiarity influences political communication. Although this demonstrates the public is averse to consuming news from unfamiliar media, we show that—conditional on exposure to them—unknown local and foreign media sources can influence public opinion to an extent similar to established mainstream news outlets on the same issues. This comparable effectiveness stems from the public’s charitable evaluations of the credibility of unfamiliar news sources and their relatively low trust in familiar mainstream media. We find avoidance of unknown news outlets, not resistance to their coverage, is the primary factor limiting their political influence.

How Sticky Is Pink Slime? Assessing the Credibility of Deceptive Local Media

“…I set out to choose a headline that would not be controversial or overtly political but nonetheless attention-grabbing. More explicitly political prompts, from the information (Peterson and Allamong 2022) to the site names themselves (Pennycook and rand 2019), could yield different results. It may also be that Philadelphia's media market, which is split among three states, has different dynamics than a similarly large market located within a single state, such as Dallas or Phoenix.…”

“…Finally, I find that low-credibility evaluations increase when assessment is delayed, meaning that initial resistance to unfamiliar news sites may not be psychologically "sticky." The void left by the decline of trusted local news sources (Bengani 2019(Bengani , 2020Munger 2020;Pennycook and rand 2019;Peterson and Allamong 2022;Van Aelst et al 2017) has made room for the exploitation of low cost of market entry in pink slime journalism that pushes political agendas. This study contributes to our understanding of the limits of that strategy and the emotional connection that our imperiled local newspapers may still hold with the communities they serve (Kaniss 1991).…”

“…Surveys have found that partisan-sounding websites receive lower-credibility judgments than do more established sources (Pennycook and rand 2019), but there is little research on more innocuous-sounding local websites. For online sites that "mimic the naming conventions of established media" at the state level, such as the "Louisiana Business Daily," Peterson and Allamong (2022) find that these unknown sources are evaluated neutrally. It is not clear if a "web-native" name ending in .com, rather than one that sounds like a legacy outlet, would perform differently.…”

Analysis of personal psychological motivation and social psychological motivation of Retaliatory Justice under moral public opinion: Chinese cases

“…Later, the semantic concept of Retaliatory Justice was translated into academic concepts, its core connotation was further strengthened, and various academic concepts with different focuses emerged under different disciplines. For example, its focus in ethics is on Socio-Ethical values (Cheng et al, 2021), while in jurisprudence, it focuses on the purpose and value of punishment (Peterson and Allamong, 2022;Shi et al, 2022), and so on. In general, Retaliatory Justice refers to the punishment of subjects who transgress norms, offend morality, and commit harm, and to the knowledge, the aforementioned punishment can lead to a state of "deserving" and "deserving punishment" in society (Wang et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2022).…”

Terrified or Enraged? Emotional Microfoundations of Public Counterterror Attitudes

“…59.See, for example, Arceneaux 2012; de Benedictis-Kessner et al 2019; Brader, Valentino, and Suhay 2008; Druckman and Nelson 2003; Gadarian 2010; Lajevardi 2021; Peterson and Allamong 2022.…”