Perceived Influence of Partisan News and Online News Participation: Third-person Effect, Hostile Media Phenomenon, and Cognitive Elaboration

Seungsu Lee, Kyungmo Kim*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study suggests a unified framework to examine the third-person perception (TPP) in the context of partisan news use. By amalgamating social identity theories with the elaboration likelihood model or the heuristic-systematic model, Study 1 investigates the role of message features (source cues and content slant), targets (in-group vs. out-group), and audience characteristics (political identity and elaboration) on TPP. Two online experiments conducted in the US and South Korea show that differences between pro- and counter-attitudinal content are larger when the target is an out-group member. TPP is also amplified when audiences have high elaboration. Study 2 explores the interplay between TPP and the hostile media phenomenon (HMP) on news sharing and commenting online. The result reveals that TPP reduces news sharing/commenting intention by decreasing perceptions of news quality. In addition, HMP strengthens the indirect effect of TPP on news sharing/commenting for out-group members, but mitigates it for in-group members. © The Author(s) 2022.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)854-878
Number of pages25
JournalCommunication Research
Volume50
Issue number7
Online published13 Nov 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2023
Externally publishedYes

Research Keywords

  • elaboration
  • hostile media phenomenon
  • news commenting
  • news sharing
  • third-person effect

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