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Maybe there should be a 'Human Behavior' category...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...0.01525.x/full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...0.01525.x/full
This experiment tests effects of passive, neutral reporting of contradictory factual claims on audiences. Exposure to such reporting is found to affect a new self-efficacy construct developed in this study called epistemic political efficacy (EPE), which taps confidence in one's own ability to determine truth in politics. Measurement of EPE is found to be reliable and valid, and effects of neutral reporting on it are found to be conditional on prior interest in the issues under dispute. Implications of this effect and of EPE are discussed. Self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1982) suggests these short-term effects may accumulate over time. EPE may affect outcomes related to political understanding, opinion formation, and information seeking.
Many have criticized modern journalism for playing too passive a role in factual disputes (Cunningham, 2003; Durham, 1998; Jamieson & Waldman, 2003; Rosen, 1993; Streckfuss, 1990). As a result of a number of factors, but most importantly newsroom cost-cutting, faster news cycles, and fear of “going out on a limb,” mainstream American journalism has become drastically more passive over the past few decades (Anderson, 2004; Jamieson & Waldman, 2003; McChesney, 1999, 2004; Patterson, 2000; Plasser, 2005). Although the proliferation of news outlets creates the appearance that journalism is thriving, fewer reporter-hours are devoted to each story, leaving less time for journalists to do their homework (Jamieson & Waldman, 2003). As a result, journalists often resort to “he said/she said” reporting, in which even when two sides make directly contradictory claims about a verifiable factual question, the reporter leaves it as an exercise for the reader to do the additional homework necessary to resolve the dispute (e.g., reading the text of a bill, checking transcripts or recordings of a speech, and questioning an expert or an eyewitness).
One alarming possible consequence of such reporting is a trend toward increased levels of factual disagreement across party lines, with factual belief differences perhaps even replacing inherently subjective value differences as the primary basis of partisan polarization (Shapiro & Bloch-Elkon, 2008). Shapiro and Bloch-Elkon point out that this has consequences for the health of a democracy because it indicates incorrect factual beliefs among partisans on one side or the other. However, effects of passive journalism may not be limited to the partisan faithful or to specific incorrect beliefs. It would be perfectly understandable for someone caught between two rapidly diverging partisan versions of reality to disengage from politics out of a profound sense of inefficacy about what to believe. This article develops and validates a measure of this feeling of inefficacy about political truth, while also testing effects of passive versus active journalism on it. The self-efficacy construct developed here, epistemic political efficacy (EPE), is a form of confidence in one's own ability to determine the truth about factual aspects of politics. Although political efficacy is confidence in one's ability to affect politics, EPE is a form of confidence in one's ability to understand it. As such, this construct may be a missing communication counterpart to one of the most widely useful constructs in political science, promising to improve our understanding of information seeking, opinion formation, political learning, and other understanding-oriented citizen behaviors and cognitions.
Along with this novel dependent variable, also thought to be of potential utility to communication researchers is the novel independent variable in this study, which is whether a news story actively adjudicates factual disputes or passively reports a “he said/she said” story. There has been almost no research on how this affects audiences. Despite urgent alarms about the decline or even the death of journalism as an effective watchdog over government and more generally as a guardian of honesty and accuracy in our national discussion (e.g., Nichols & McChesney, 2009), research has told us little about how the resulting changes in the content of news stories actually affects audiences. This study aims to pave the way for more research into these effects, demonstrating how journalistic adjudication can be a tractable experimental manipulation by isolating it from balance, story length, and the number of facts presented. Past work is mostly theoretical or content analytic and tends not to even theorize possible psychological consequences for audience members in any depth, framing the problem instead as a failure to keep political elites honest. A partial exception comes from research on science and health reporting, in which many have pointed out how balanced journalism can allow corporations to “manufacture uncertainty” about questions such as the health consequences of smoking or the link between human activity and climate change (for a review see Michaels & Monforton, 2005). This research has focused on specific uncertainty about the particular questions under dispute, and the concept of manufacturing uncertainty is usually thought of as limited to realms of expert knowledge. This study extends this concept in two key directions: into the realm of everyday political facts that ordinary journalists should be able to check for themselves and beyond specific uncertainty about any particular facts under dispute to a broader, generalized sense of political uncertainty (epistemic political inefficacy).
Many have criticized modern journalism for playing too passive a role in factual disputes (Cunningham, 2003; Durham, 1998; Jamieson & Waldman, 2003; Rosen, 1993; Streckfuss, 1990). As a result of a number of factors, but most importantly newsroom cost-cutting, faster news cycles, and fear of “going out on a limb,” mainstream American journalism has become drastically more passive over the past few decades (Anderson, 2004; Jamieson & Waldman, 2003; McChesney, 1999, 2004; Patterson, 2000; Plasser, 2005). Although the proliferation of news outlets creates the appearance that journalism is thriving, fewer reporter-hours are devoted to each story, leaving less time for journalists to do their homework (Jamieson & Waldman, 2003). As a result, journalists often resort to “he said/she said” reporting, in which even when two sides make directly contradictory claims about a verifiable factual question, the reporter leaves it as an exercise for the reader to do the additional homework necessary to resolve the dispute (e.g., reading the text of a bill, checking transcripts or recordings of a speech, and questioning an expert or an eyewitness).
One alarming possible consequence of such reporting is a trend toward increased levels of factual disagreement across party lines, with factual belief differences perhaps even replacing inherently subjective value differences as the primary basis of partisan polarization (Shapiro & Bloch-Elkon, 2008). Shapiro and Bloch-Elkon point out that this has consequences for the health of a democracy because it indicates incorrect factual beliefs among partisans on one side or the other. However, effects of passive journalism may not be limited to the partisan faithful or to specific incorrect beliefs. It would be perfectly understandable for someone caught between two rapidly diverging partisan versions of reality to disengage from politics out of a profound sense of inefficacy about what to believe. This article develops and validates a measure of this feeling of inefficacy about political truth, while also testing effects of passive versus active journalism on it. The self-efficacy construct developed here, epistemic political efficacy (EPE), is a form of confidence in one's own ability to determine the truth about factual aspects of politics. Although political efficacy is confidence in one's ability to affect politics, EPE is a form of confidence in one's ability to understand it. As such, this construct may be a missing communication counterpart to one of the most widely useful constructs in political science, promising to improve our understanding of information seeking, opinion formation, political learning, and other understanding-oriented citizen behaviors and cognitions.
Along with this novel dependent variable, also thought to be of potential utility to communication researchers is the novel independent variable in this study, which is whether a news story actively adjudicates factual disputes or passively reports a “he said/she said” story. There has been almost no research on how this affects audiences. Despite urgent alarms about the decline or even the death of journalism as an effective watchdog over government and more generally as a guardian of honesty and accuracy in our national discussion (e.g., Nichols & McChesney, 2009), research has told us little about how the resulting changes in the content of news stories actually affects audiences. This study aims to pave the way for more research into these effects, demonstrating how journalistic adjudication can be a tractable experimental manipulation by isolating it from balance, story length, and the number of facts presented. Past work is mostly theoretical or content analytic and tends not to even theorize possible psychological consequences for audience members in any depth, framing the problem instead as a failure to keep political elites honest. A partial exception comes from research on science and health reporting, in which many have pointed out how balanced journalism can allow corporations to “manufacture uncertainty” about questions such as the health consequences of smoking or the link between human activity and climate change (for a review see Michaels & Monforton, 2005). This research has focused on specific uncertainty about the particular questions under dispute, and the concept of manufacturing uncertainty is usually thought of as limited to realms of expert knowledge. This study extends this concept in two key directions: into the realm of everyday political facts that ordinary journalists should be able to check for themselves and beyond specific uncertainty about any particular facts under dispute to a broader, generalized sense of political uncertainty (epistemic political inefficacy).
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