Effects of the News‐Finds‐Me Perception in Communication: Social Media Use Implications for News Seeking and Learning About Politics

With social media at the forefront of today's media context, citizens may perceive they don't need to actively seek news because they will be exposed to news and remain well‐informed through their peers and social networks. We label this the “news‐finds‐me perception,” and test its implications for news seeking and political knowledge: “news‐finds‐me effects.” U.S. panel‐survey data show that individuals who perceive news will find them are less likely to use traditional news sources and are less knowledgeable about politics over time. Although the news‐finds‐me perception is positively associated with news exposure on social media, this behavior doesn't facilitate political learning. These results suggest news continues to enhance political knowledge best when actively sought.     

Echo chambers online?: Politically motivated selective exposure among Internet news users1

A review of research suggests that the desire for opinion reinforcement may play a more important role in shaping individuals’ exposure to online political information than an aversion to opinion challenge. The article tests this idea using data collected via a web‐administered behavior‐tracking study with subjects recruited from the readership of 2 partisan online news sites (N = 727). The results demonstrate that opinion‐reinforcing information promotes news story exposure while opinion‐challenging information makes exposure only marginally less likely. The influence of both factors is modest, but opinion‐reinforcing information is a more important predictor. Having decided to view a news story, evidence of an aversion to opinion challenges disappears: There is no evidence that individuals abandon news stories that contain information with which they disagree. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Incidental Exposure,Selective Exposure,and Political Information Sharing: Integrating Online Exposure Patterns and Expression on Social Media

Political information sharing in social media offers citizens opportunities to engage with news and express their political views, but how do different patterns of online political information exposure, including both incidental and selective exposure, affect sharing? Using two‐wave panel survey data collected in the United States, we examine the relationship between incidental and selective exposure and their consequent links to political information sharing, across different levels of strength of political party affiliation. Our results demonstrate that incidental exposure to counter‐attitudinal information drives stronger partisans to more actively seek out like‐minded political content, which subsequently encourages political information sharing on social media. The results highlight the need to consider both types of political information exposure when modeling citizens' political behavior online.     

Selective Exposure for Better or Worse: Its Mediating Role for Online News' Impact on Political Participation

The role of selective exposure in the relationship between online news use and political participation is examined. American adults (N = 205) completed a 2‐session online study that measured political interest and online news use, unobtrusively observed selective exposure, and finally measured political participation likelihood. Online news use and selective exposure to attitude‐consistent information were modeled as sequential mediators between political interest and participation likelihood. While greater political interest increased both participation likelihood and online news use, online news use ultimately depressed participation likelihood by reducing selective exposure to attitude‐consistent news. The findings demonstrate that selective exposure is a fundamental process that must be considered when testing the effect of Internet use on political participation.     

The Internet and Anti-War Activism: A Case Study of Information, Expression, and Action

This case study examines how traditional and Internet news use, as well as face‐to‐face and online political discussion, contributed to political participation during the period leading up to the Iraq War. A Web‐based survey of political dissenters (N = 307) conducted at the start of the U.S.‐led invasion of Iraq provides the data used to examine the relationships among informational media use, online and face‐to‐face political discussion, and political participation among the respondents, who were recruited through blogs, discussion boards, and listservs opposing the Iraq war. Analyses reveal that among these respondents, Internet news use contributed to both face‐to‐face and online discussion about the situation in Iraq. Online and face‐to‐face political discussion mediated certain news media effects on anti‐war political participation. The study stresses the complementary role of Web news use and online political discussion relative to traditional modes of political communication in spurring political participation.     

Birds of a Feather Tweet Together: Integrating Network and Content Analyses to Examine Cross‐Ideology Exposure on Twitter

This study integrates network and content analyses to examine exposure to cross‐ideological political views on Twitter. We mapped the Twitter networks of 10 controversial political topics, discovered clusters – subgroups of highly self‐connected users – and coded messages and links in them for political orientation. We found that Twitter users are unlikely to be exposed to cross‐ideological content from the clusters of users they followed, as these were usually politically homogeneous. Links pointed at grassroots web pages (e.g.: blogs) more frequently than traditional media websites. Liberal messages, however, were more likely to link to traditional media. Last, we found that more specific topics of controversy had both conservative and liberal clusters, while in broader topics, dominant clusters reflected conservative sentiment.     

The Double‐Edged Sword: The Effects of Journalists' Social Media Activities on Audience Perceptions of Journalists and Their News Products

As social media become popular news platforms, journalists and news organizations have been keen to capitalize on their potential to build and maintain audiences. However, little is known about the extent to which these efforts may have adverse implications. Based on normative theories, the present study investigates the influence of journalists' social media activities (specifically, self‐disclosure and interaction with other users) on audience perceptions of journalists. An experiment (N = 267) revealed that: Although both journalists' self‐disclosure and interaction positively influenced audience perceptions of the journalists in the personal dimension, interaction negatively influenced audience perceptions in the professional dimension; and the perceptions transferred to perceptions of news products, thereby mediating the relationship between journalists' social media activities and audience news perceptions.     

New Media and the ‘Anchor Baby’ Boom

The term ‘anchor baby’ refers to children born in the U.S. to undocumented migrant parents who are thought to have been conceived in order to improve their parents' chances of attaining citizenship. Though the term is considered racist and dehumanizing by many, it has recently entered into common usage. This study investigates the process by which this has occurred. We test hypotheses derived from theories of mass and new media using multiple data sources and methods of analysis, and find that the main sources of the anchor baby boom are partisan news websites. The findings suggest that new media may be influencing mass media by creating unique and unprecedented opportunities for medium‐sized partisan news organizations.     

Why Are “Others” So Polarized? Perceived Political Polarization and Media Use in 10 Countries

This study tests the associations between news media use and perceived political polarization, conceptualized as citizens' beliefs about partisan divides among major political parties. Relying on representative surveys in Canada, Colombia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we test whether perceived polarization is related to the use of television news, newspaper, radio news, and online news media. Data show that online news consumption is systematically and consistently related to perceived polarization, but not to attitude polarization, understood as individual attitude extremity. In contrast, the relationships between traditional media use and perceived and attitude polarization is mostly country dependent. An explanation of these findings based on exemplification is proposed and tested in an experimental design.     

An evidence‐based iterative content trust algorithm for the credibility of online news

People encounter more information than they can possibly use every day. But all information is not necessarily of equal value. In many cases, certain information appears to be better, or more trustworthy, than other information. And the challenge that most people then face is to judge which information is more credible. In this paper we propose a new problem called Corroboration Trust, which studies how to find credible news events by seeking more than one source to verify information on a given topic. We design an evidence‐based corroboration trust algorithm called TrustNewsFinder, which utilizes the relationships between news articles and related evidence information (person, location, time and keywords about the news). A news article is trustworthy if it provides many pieces of trustworthy evidence, and a piece of evidence is likely to be true if it is provided by many trustworthy news articles. Our experiments show that TrustNewsFinder successfully finds true events among conflicting information and identifies trustworthy news better than the popular search engines. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Networked Press Freedom and Social Media: Tracing Historical and Contemporary Forces in Press‐Public Relations

This paper analyzes how mainstream, online news organizations understand press autonomy in their relationships to audiences. I situate the press in terms of neo‐institutional sociology, seeing its autonomy as a distributed, field‐level phenomenon involving “boundary work” among distributed actors. I then trace press‐audience relations through two historical examples (letters to the editor and ombudsmen), showing how the press has historically both separated itself from and relied upon audiences. Examining eight news organizations' social media policies, I analyze the “inside‐out” and “outside‐in” forces through which the press distinguishes itself from audiences, concluding with a discussion of how such guidelines structure the types of control that news organizations have, or might have, as they use social network sites in their news work.     

News Recommendations from Social Media Opinion Leaders: Effects on Media Trust and Information Seeking

Polls show a strong decline in public trust of traditional news outlets; however, social media offers new avenues for receiving news content. This experiment used the Facebook API to manipulate whether a news story appeared to have been posted on Facebook by one of the respondent's real‐life Facebook friends. Results show that social media recommendations improve levels of media trust, and also make people want to follow more news from that particular media outlet in the future. Moreover, these effects are amplified when the real‐life friend sharing the story on social media is perceived as an opinion leader. Implications for democracy and the news business are discussed.     

A novel modified undersampling (MUS) technique for software defect prediction

Background and aim: Many sophisticated data mining and machine learning algorithms have been used for software defect prediction (SDP) to enhance the quality of software. However, real‐world SDP data sets suffer from class imbalance, which leads to a biased classifier and reduces the performance of existing classification algorithms resulting in an inaccurate classification and prediction. This work aims to improve the class imbalance nature of data sets to increase the accuracy of defect prediction and decrease the processing time . Methodology: The proposed model focuses on balancing the class of data sets to increase the accuracy of prediction and decrease processing time. It consists of a modified undersampling method and a correlation feature selection (CFS) method. Results: The results from ten open source project data sets showed that the proposed model improves the accuracy in terms of F1‐score to 0.52 ～ 0.96, and hence it is proximity reached best F1‐score value in 0.96 near to 1 then it is given a perfect performance in the prediction process. Conclusion: The proposed model focuses on balancing the class of data sets to increase the accuracy of prediction and decrease processing time using the proposed model.     

Incidental exposure to news: Predictors in the social media setting and effects on information gain online

Employing two studies, this paper investigates incidental exposure to news online in terms of its influence on individual learning about public affairs as well as its predictors in the social media environment. Study 1, using an experimental design, shows that incidental exposure to news has significant effects on an individual's recognition and recall of information in news stories. The effects of incidental exposure on recall are mediated by actual exposure to information in the news (spending some time on reading), suggesting gateway effects of initial exposure by accident. Employing a national survey, Study 2 finds that social media network heterogeneity and proportion of weak ties are positively associated with likelihood of incidental exposure to news online, while most variables of individual characteristics are not. The significant effects of structural factors found suggest that incidental exposure can limit consequences of selective exposure. Further implications of the findings are discussed.     

Facebook,the Third‐Person Effect,and the Differential Impact Hypothesis

This study examined the effects of embedding and framing online news stories in social media contexts on perceived message influence and third‐person effects (3PE). 88 undergraduates at a Northeastern U.S. university participated in an online experiment in which they evaluated news stories posted on Facebook. A 4 x 2 mixed experimental design was used with the between‐subject variables of viewing condition (no Facebook frame, neutral Facebook, positive Facebook evaluation, and negative Facebook evaluation) and the within‐subjects factor of story relevance (Low, High). Results indicate that perceptions of personal influence increase in social media contexts for more personally relevant stories. These results are consistent with the Differential Impact Hypothesis.     

Perceptions of News Credibility about the War in Iraq: Why War Opponents Perceived the Internet as the Most Credible Medium

This study investigated cross‐media credibility perception with respect to news coverage about the Iraq War. In an environment of political partisanship, perceptions of media credibility were likely affected by the audience’s political position on the war. Based on hostile media effect theory, a set of hypotheses was proposed to investigate whether the minority opinion group, war opponents, evaluated the Internet as a more credible medium than did neutrals or supporters. An online survey was conducted to which 481 people responded (71% war supporters, 19% opponents, 10% neutrals). Results showed that opponents of the war perceived the Internet as less aligned with a pro‐government position and as more credible than did neutrals or supporters. The opponent group also showed a strong negative correlation between perceived pro‐government alignment and perceptions of Internet credibility. For the minority partisan group, the diversity of information and views on the war was the main reason for the perception of high credibility of the Internet as a news channel.     

The Mediatization of E‐Campaigning: Evidence From German Party Websites in State,National, and European Parliamentary Elections 2002–2009

The rise of e‐campaigning is often associated with its ability to circumvent journalistic principles of news selection and presentation. By this, parties and candidates are said to free themselves from the discretionary power of the mass media and to reach voters in an unfiltered way. This conventional wisdom is tested through a comparative content analysis of German party websites in state, national, and European parliamentary elections between 2002 and 2009. The results show that e‐campaigns in all elections adhere in their messages to the media logic. Specifically, they replicate those patterns of offline coverage that have been held accountable for rising political alienation and civic apathy. Moreover, the mediatization of German e‐campaigning grows over time.     

Image effects on selective exposure to computer-mediated news stories

Do pictures accompanying news stories influence selective exposure to the stories as compared to the same stories viewed without pictures? Further, does the emotional nature of the image – non-threatening versus threatening – impact selective exposure? This study aimed to answer these questions by examining the impact of different types of pictures on selectivity of and duration of exposure to computer-mediated news stories. Male and female participants were randomly assigned to one of four image conditions (text only control, reporter portrait, non-threatening, threatening) in which they were able to freely select and view news stories via a computer based delivery system. The findings of this study revealed that exposure to both non-threatening and threatening images resulted in significantly longer self-exposure to that portion of the news story where the image and text were presented concurrently. Furthermore, the data at hand shows that the incorporation of negatively valenced images accompanying news stories resulted in significantly longer self-exposure time to subsequent sections of the news story text devoid of an accompanying image. This latter finding provides the first evidence of selective exposure induced by a graphic, threatening image that is not confounded with the presence of the image. Some implications of these findings and avenues for future research are discussed.     

Online Ideology: A Comparison of Website Communication and Media Use

This study examined and compared the websites of ideological groups from a communications and media use perspective. Thirty‐six websites with message boards categorized as either violent ideological, nonviolent ideological, or nonviolent nonideological were content coded for several distinguishing characteristics. The results indicated that group type was predicted by the type of information presented, the difficulty of becoming a member, and the amount of freedom members had on discussion boards. These findings suggest that characteristics of violent ideological group websites can be used to distinguish them from websites of both nonviolent ideological and nonideological groups. This study also provides a demonstration of a research methodology that can be used to naturally observe ideological groups via an online setting.     

Online Journalism and the War in Cyberspace: A Comparison Between U.S. and International Newspapers

The 2003 Iraq War was the first military conflict in which online media played a significant role. Traditional news organizations from around the world provided extensive coverage of the conflict on their websites, reaching global audiences and adding new dimensions to traditional war reporting. This study explores how the Internet disseminated news about the war by comparing 26 international newspaper sites (N = 791) and their use of Web‐specific features such as hyperlinks, animations, multimedia content, and interactive elements. By proposing a three‐stage model of online journalism and applying it to the online war coverage, the analysis suggests that online journalism has not yet reached the state of convergence. The differences in online news coverage between the United States and international websites and their implications are also discussed.