I forget where this study is so I can’t post it. But I did post it once and I remember it.
The way the study worked was this. First they divided people into how they primarily got their news–tv, print, or the internet. The internet source was not just blogs. It especially includes things like basically headlines sites–where you go and daily they provide new headlines and you click on the articles you want to read.
They then asked people a series of questions based on statements. It was basically a true/false format. Many of the statments were deliberately based on common and active misperceptions. For example, one was, the USA did find the WMD in Iraq, true or false.
They divided the people into who had the most and who had the least percentage of misconceptions, based on their answers. They then matched them up with their primary news source.
The group with the highest percentage of misconceptions in their answers got their news primarily from tv. And mostly it did not matter what the source was–Fox, CNN, NBC, etc. Within the tv category, the group that had the lowest percentage of misconceptions got their news primarily from The Daily Show.
Print was better than tv but it was not the best. All sorts of sources counted–newspapers, news magazines. The people who got their news primarily from print were better than those who relied primarily on tv but they still had a fairly high percentage of misconceptions.
The internet group had the lowest percentage of misconceptions.
The theory was this. Those who rely primarily on the internet for news tended to get their news from headline sites. The reason this was the group with the lowest percentage of misconceptions was because internet readers tend to read more than one source on the same issue. So they click one headline, and it’s in The New Zealand Herald, and the next article on the same topic is from the LA Times, and the next article on the same topic is from the Belleville News-Democrat, etc.
Print readers stick with a narrow range of sources (for example someone who always reads the local paper). As a result they tend not to notice slant or ideological vision.
Internet readers, in contrast, by getting their news from (as it always turns out) a wide range of different sources (because they click more than one headline on the same topic_) are very used to seeing stories reported in different ways with different frames. So they are used to looking for differences in framing and take it that that is just a normal part of reading news. They are always comparing accounts, not simply passively absorbing a single account or 2. They read with this “comparing differences” mindset.
AND among those who tend to get an array of sources on any given issue–which as we all know is easy to do on the internet–it does not matter as much WHAT the sources are. It can be just the LA Times and the NY Times. By reading news this way, these people are always in a position to actively compare accounts. They don’t just passively absorb one favorite source or 2. So reading comparatively trumps the source. For example, the NY Times article you pull up might approach the issue one way, the McClatchy paper you read next might approach it another way, and each has things in it the other doesn’t (even if they are minor things). Doing it this way means people are less likely to have misonceptions about the news than someone who just reads the Chicago Sun Times every day. So someone who relies primarily on print can get unconsciously absorbed into a particular way of framing the news, while the comparative reading on the internet type is well aware of framing and so is used to sorting through and accounting for differences.
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Yeah, that all makes sense. I think people who are more likely to read the news as opposed to watching it on TV tend to be more intellectually curious anyway. TV is so passive. Click a button then lean back further into your chair, set brain to idle. Reading is more active. It requires your attention. It puts your brain to work.
