Commentary

It's The News Brand, Not Its Content, Stupid

by Joe Mandese , May 26, 2021

There's some fascinating new research from the Knight Foundation suggesting that the confirmation biases of American news consumers may have more to do with their perceptions than the reality of the sources they read.

The research is based on a control study that measured differences in the way Americans read …

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1 comment about "It's The News Brand, Not Its Content, Stupid".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, May 27, 2021 at 8:47 a.m.
Joe, we see this kind of thing in many studies covering all sorts of subjects. For example, TV commercial recall levels are almost always considerably higher among product users who are current buyers of the advertised brand than all product users. TV program attentiveness studies almost always show higher attentiveness levels for program content among frequent viewers---those who watched the show for each of the past four weeks and, presumably are fans---as opposed to those who just watched it once during the month, etc. etc. Over and over again, the messsage you are citing about news articles is clear---those who are in agreement or, for whatever reason, are "partisan" are more likely to respond.
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