How do we raise media bias awareness effectively? Effects of visualizations to communicate bias

PLoS One. 2022 Apr 13;17(4):e0266204. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266204. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Media bias has a substantial impact on individual and collective perception of news. Effective communication that may counteract its potential negative effects still needs to be developed. In this article, we analyze how to facilitate the detection of media bias with visual and textual aids in the form of (a) a forewarning message, (b) text annotations, and (c) political classifiers. In an online experiment, we randomized 985 participants to receive a biased liberal or conservative news article in any combination of the three aids. Meanwhile, their subjective perception of media bias in this article, attitude change, and political ideology were assessed. Both the forewarning message and the annotations increased media bias awareness, whereas the political classification showed no effect. Incongruence between an articles' political position and individual political orientation also increased media bias awareness. Visual aids did not mitigate this effect. Likewise, attitudes remained unaltered.

Publication types

  • Randomized Controlled Trial
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Attitude
  • Audiovisual Aids
  • Bias*
  • Humans
  • Mass Media*
  • Politics

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation [DFG] (https://www.dfg.de/) under Grant 441541975, the German Research Foundation Centre (https://www.dfg.de/) of Excellence 2117 "Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour" (ID: 422037984). It was also supported by the Hanns-Seidel Foundation (https://www.hss.de/) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) (https://www.daad.de/de/). None of the funder played any role in the study design or any publication related decisions.