Zheng study: News consumption, media perception, polarization linked
News consumption encourages people to engage in like-minded discussions, which leads to stronger relative hostile media perception and subsequent polarization, according to a study conducted by doctoral candidate Xia Zheng.
“News consumption and affective polarization in Taiwan: The mediating roles of like-minded discussion and relative hostile media perception,” by Zheng and Bowling Green State University’s Yanqin Lu, MA’13, PhD’17, was published in The Social Science Journal.
The authors examined findings from a two-wave representative survey conducted in Taiwan to evaluate the relationship between news intake and polarization. The findings suggest news media use and interpersonal discussion work together to affect political polarization.
People’s perceived trustworthiness of political news media can affect behaviors and feelings associated with political parties, according to the study.
This is the first study that comes from the research program looking at the interactions between media use, individual political features and social contexts on affective polarization.