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Title: Study: People Who Consume Mostly Liberal or Mostly Conservative News Easily Reject Facts
Source:
Free Thought Project
URL Source: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/st ... cal-media/#OuehvoYWWQHvIPZo.99
Published: Aug 10, 2016
Author: Matt Agorist
Post Date: 2016-08-11 07:43:29 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 2261
Comments: 10
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.” On a daily basis, the Free Thought Project is accused of being a conservative mouthpiece, funded and run by the Koch brothers. Also, on a daily basis, the Free Thought Project is accused of being a liberal mouthpiece, funded and run by George Soros. On a daily basis, these assertions are wholly and undeniably wrong. When there is a government boot on your neck, whether this boot is from the left foot or right foot is of no concern. The Free Thought Project does not keep it a secret that we hold no faith in the two-party political paradigm or process and we seek only truth and liberty for all. We believe in freedom — and we do not follow that statement up with the word ‘but.’ We want interracial transgendered couples to be able to cultivate their organic marijuana fields on solar powered tractors, armed with AR-15s, while blogging about being anti-war and against police brutality. Consequently, as a glaring new study illustrates, partisan media wants the exact opposite. The study, published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, is titled, Driving a Wedge Between Evidence and Beliefs: How Online Ideological News Exposure Promotes Political Misperceptions. The study’s authors set out to determine if partisan media sources contribute to political ignorance — and they did just that. Data came from a three-wave panel study conducted during the 2012 presidential election. Participants were interviewed first during July-August 2012, a second time in August-October and a final time in November. A total of 652 nationally representative participants completed all three surveys, as noted by Ohio State University. “Partisan online media drive a wedge between evidence and beliefs,” said R. Kelly Garrett, lead author of the study and professor of communication at The Ohio State University. “The more people use these sources, the more likely they are to embrace false claims, regardless of what they know about the evidence,” he explained. The study found that both liberals and conservatives fell victim to disinformation from their perceived ‘unbiased’ sources. “What you believe isn’t just about what party you belong to. Where you get your news matters, too,” Garrett said. According to the study: The emergence of the Internet as a primary source of political information has transformed many Americans’ experience of the news, giving voice to previously marginalized political factions and creating outlets for explicitly ideological reporting (Stroud, 2011; C. Sunstein, 2001). This transformation has been accompanied by numerous high-profile misperceptions, such as erroneous beliefs about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and about the birthplace of President Obama (World Public Opinion, 2006; YouGov Staff, 2014). The possibility that these phenomena are related is troubling, but evidence for the relationship is limited and the processes by which it might occur are not well understood. This article further substantiates the idea that ideologically slanted online news use promotes misperceptions. The study focused on four misconceptions, or rather, untruths; two held prominently by liberals, and two held prominently by conservatives. The well-documented falsehoods that favor Republicans were the claims that President Obama was not born in the United States, and that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq. The Democrat-favored misperceptions parallel these. One claim was critical of the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, suggesting that Mitt Romney actively managed Bain Capital when the firm started investing in companies that outsourced work abroad. The other claim concerned an assertion supporting a widely held Democratic policy position, namely that there was an immediate drop in marine life diversity in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil spill. ― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report
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#4. To: Deckard (#0)
I just think they are a nutjob mouthpiece. They are like infowars. Even if they have an article I might find compelling, I just think, "no way I'm going to visit that loony bin."
#5. To: no gnu taxes (#4)
Yeah real nutjobs. You and Gatslime are two peas in a pod, afraid of the truth.
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Replies to Comment # 4. I just think they are a nutjob mouthpiece.
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