The hostile media effect, sometimes called the hostile media phenomenon, refers to the finding that ideological partisans consistently tend to think that media coverage is biased against their particular side of the issue.

This tendency has been verified in a number of experiments.

In one study by Robert Vallone , Lee Ross and Mark Lepper, pro-Palestinian students and pro-Israeli students at Stanford University were shown the same news filmstrips pertaining to the then-recent Sabra and Shatila massacre of Arab refugees in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. On a number of objective measures, both sides found that these identical news clips were slanted in favor of the other side. Pro-Israeli students reported seeing more anti-Israel references and fewer favorable references to Israel in the news report and pro-Palestinian students reported seeing more anti-Palestinian references, and so on. Both sides said a neutral observer would have a more negative view of their side from viewing the clips, and that the media would have excused the other side where it blamed their side.

It is important not that the two sides disagreed on subjective generalizations about the media coverage as a whole, such as what might be expressed as "I thought that the news has been generally biased against this side of the issue." Instead, controlling for the same news clips, subjects differed along partisan lines on simple, objective criteria such as the number of references to a given subject. As such, the hostile media effect is not just a difference of opinion but a difference of perception.

This effect is interesting to psychologists because it appears to be a reversal of the otherwise pervasive effects of confirmation bias: in this area, people seem to pay more attention to information that contradicts rather than what supports their pre-existing views. More recently, theorists have begun using the term disconfirmation bias to explain this kind of effect.

Studies have found hostile media effects related to other political conflicts, including strife in Bosnia and in U.S. presidential elections.

See also

Psychology:

• Cognitive bias
• Self-serving bias
• Selective perception
• List of cognitive biases

Media:

• Media bias
  • Liberal bias
  • Conservative bias
• Media coverage of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

References

• Vallone, R. P., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the "Beirut Massacre". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 577-585. (summary here)
• Dalton, R. J., Beck, P. A., & Huckfeldt, R. (1998). Partisan Cues and the Media: Information Flows in the 1992 Presidential Election. American Political Science Review, 92, 1, 111-26.
• Matheson, K. & Dursun, S. (2001). Social identity precursors to the hostile media phenomenon: Partisan perceptions of coverage of the Bosnian conflict. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 4, 117-126.

External links

• Ohio State: Think Political News Is Biased? Depends Who You Ask
• Cancelling Each Other Out? Interest Group Perceptions of the News Media
• Public Perceptions of Bias in the News Media: Taking A Closer Look at the Hostile Media Phenomenon (PDF)