ARTICLE: Uncivil reader comments increase support for authoritative restrictions

If a news article is followed by uncivil reader comments, other readers will become more permissive towards moderator or even police action against uncivil comments. Teresa K. Naab (University of Augsburg), Thorsten Naab (German Youth Institute) and Jonas Brandmeier (U. of Augsburg and U. of Erfurt) investigated the matter through an online experiment with 213 … Continued

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Published: 20 Nov 2019

ARTICLE: Data does not make news credible, but data visualization does

News articles that cite numbers are no more credible to the audience than stories without them, an experiment with Hongkonger university students indicates. Y. Roselyn Du, Lingzi Zhu and Benjamin K. L. Cheng, all of Hong Kong Baptist University, presented 257 students with one version of a news article: either one citing exact numbers, one … Continued

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Published: 18 Nov 2019

ARTICLE: Headless photos increase negativity towards obese people

News images that depict obese people from the neck down increase the readers’ negative attitudes towards the obese, a team of researchers found. They conducted two online experiments with 332 and 312 participants, respectively. In them, participants read a news article with a picture of an obese or an overweight person, some female, some male … Continued

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Published: 15 Nov 2019

ARTICLE: Fact-checking works, but not very well

Research indicates that fact-checking is usually able to correct the audience’s perceptions, a team of researchers found. Nathan Walter, of Northwestern University, Jonathan Cohen and Yasmin Morag, both of University of Haifa, and R. Lance Holbert, of Temple University (author names not in original order) carried out a meta-analysis of recent research on the effectiveness … Continued

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Published: 28 Oct 2019

ARTICLE: Some news drive minorities to normative protest, others to violence

Different news have different effects on what kind of collective action minorities are willing to engage in, a team of researchers discovered. Muniba Saleem, Ian Hawkins and Jessica Roden, of University of Michigan, with Magdalena E. Wojcieszak, of University of California (author names not in original order), studied American Muslims and their reactions to US … Continued

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Published: 23 Oct 2019

ARTICLE: Calling minor gaffes scandals hurts journalism’s credibility

When journalists try to exaggerate and scandalize a small transgression, they undermine the public’s trust in journalism, a team of Radboud University researchers discovered. Paul Graβl, Gabi Schaap, Flavia Spagnuolo and Jonathan Van ’t Riet conducted an experiment with 128 Dutch university students, where the participants read different kinds of news articles and assessed both … Continued

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Published: 18 Oct 2019

ARTICLE: Sensational news coverage contributes to Islamist radicalization

Mainstream news media can contribute to the radicalization of Muslims into violent Islamists, write Philip Baugut and Katharina Neumann, both of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. They interviewed 34 Islamist prisoners and 10 former Islamists over how media and online propaganda had affected their radicalization. Online propaganda by Islamist preachers often derides the Western … Continued

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Published: 16 Oct 2019