Political Bias
In “You are fake news: political bias in perceptions of fake news” it focuses on a study that was created to show what liberals and conservatives perceive what fake news is. They brought up the term “the fake news effect” which is a psychological bias where well-known liberal outlets (e.g. CNN) are described as ‘fake news’ by conservatives and, in turn, well-known conservative outlets (e.g. Fox News) are described as ‘fake news’ by liberals. Throughout the experiment, they found that political bias occurs in both parts of the parties and that liberals and conservatives have media bias. In other words, they choose where to read their news and whether to believe it or not. This is because people use their morals as a motive to believe whether the news is fake or not.
Although the fake news effect occurs in both parties, the effect appears to be more pronounced in conservative audiences. In fact, conservatives (75%) think CNN is fake news than liberals think Fox News (59%) is fake news. Another key idea is that conservatives use the term “fake news” to discredit mainstream media as a whole whereas liberals use “fake news” around politics.
Citation: van der Linden, Sander, et al. “You Are Fake News: Political Bias in Perceptions of Fake News.” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 42, no. 3, Apr. 2020, pp. 460–470, doi:10.1177/0163443720906992.
