Drawing on framing and attribution theories, this study examined how viewing Fox News and other public affairs outlets related to racial resentment in the U.S. in 2011, 2016, and 2020, and whether party moderated that relationship. An analysis of panel data from 2011, 2016, and 2020 found Fox News viewing as measured in 2011 was positively related to racial resentment in 2011 and 2020, even when controlling for party, ideology, and (in 2020) prior resentment. This relationship was consistently greater among those with stronger Democratic party affiliation, counter to what motivated reasoning would predict. Party's interactions with the viewing of other public affairs outlets were rarer and more inconsistent, but when party moderated these relationships, it was most often the case that outlet use relationships were strongest for the party for whom the content would be cross-cutting.

This study analyzed data from a Pew survey (N = 5,681) to see how party identification, political knowledge, and use of different news sources related to two beliefs about COVID-19 promoted on the right early in the pandemic: that the virus was created in a laboratory and that a vaccine for it would be available within a few months. Republicans were more likely to hold these beliefs. The more that people used news outlets with right-leaning audiences, the more likely they were to hold those two beliefs. The more they used news with left-leaning audiences, the less likely they were to believe the virus was laboratory made, a relationship stronger among Democrats. Political knowledge appeared to discourage believing the virus was laboratory-made, again more so among Democrats. However, the more that Democrats (but not Republicans) used news with bipartisan audiences, the more likely they were to believe the virus was laboratory made. Similarly, the more that Democrats (but not Republicans) used social media for news, the more they believed a vaccine would be available soon, and right-leaning news use had a stronger relationship with the early vaccine belief among Democrats.

The proliferation of political mis/disinformation on social media has led many scholars to embrace “inoculation” techniques, where individuals are trained to identify the signs of low veracity information prior to exposure. Coordinated information operations frequently spread mis/disinformation through inauthentic or “troll” accounts that appear to be trustworthy members to the targeted polity, as in Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 US presidential election. We experimentally tested the efficacy of inoculation against inauthentic online actors, using the Spot the Troll Quiz, a free, online educational tool that teaches how to spot markers of inauthenticity. Inoculation works in this setting. Across an online US nationally representative sample (N = 2,847), which also oversampled older adults, we find that taking the Spot the Troll Quiz (vs. playing a simple game) significantly increases participants’ accuracy in identifying Trolls among a set of Twitter accounts that are novel to participants. This inoculation also reduces participants’ self-efficacy in identifying inauthentic accounts and reduced the perceived reliability of fake news headlines, although it had no effect on affective polarization. And while accuracy in the novel troll-spotting task is negatively associated with age and Republican party identification, the Quiz is equally effective on older adults and Republicans as it was on younger adults and Democrats. In the field, a convenience set of Twitter users who posted their Spot the Troll Quiz results in the Fall of 2020 (N=505) reduced their rate of retweeting in the period after the Quiz, with no impact on original tweeting.

In a series of essays, scholars respond to Perloff and Shen's article, "The Third-Person Effect 40 Years After Davison Penned It." They offer further thoughts on how to measure the phenomenon, where future research is headed, and even whether the effect is real.

Secondary analysis of panel data found, after controlling for prior belief and many covariates, that 2011 Fox News viewing was negatively related to belief in global warming in 2016 and 2019, while MSNBC, broadcast news, and political comedy viewing in 2016 and CNN in 2019 had positive relationships. Partisan belief gaps in 2016 widened with CNN viewing and narrowed with viewing broadcast news, Fox News (especially with higher knowledge) and MSNBC (especially with lower knowledge), while political comedy viewing was associated both with wider (with lower knowledge) and narrower gaps (with higher knowledge). Implications for practice and theory are discussed.

Objective The study set out to examine how diversity and volatility in the public's issue agenda are related to trust in government and congressional approval. Method Data from 1975 through 2014 for public agenda issue concerns, agenda diversity, agenda volatility, congressional polarization, trust in government, and congressional approval were transformed into a quarterly time series and analyzed with ridge regression. Results A more diverse public agenda is associated with less trust in government. When agenda volatility is higher, congressional approval is higher, perhaps because the government is perceived as dealing effectively with public problems —or perhaps because the public is distracted. Diversity and volatility interact: When many evenly matched issues are on a public agenda that is turning over quickly, congressional approval is higher than when a similarly diverse agenda is stagnant. Conclusion The American public's evaluations of government are affected not only by the issue content of the public agenda but also by the character of the public agenda.

This study examined secondary survey data (N = 3,015) that asked respondents about real and pro-Trump fake news headlines in late 2016 as well as their reliance on online news sources. Reliance on Facebook for news was a vector for exposure to pro-Trump fake news but not for believing it. Reliance on Fox News online and on nonlegacy news sites was positively associated both with exposure to and perceived accuracy of pro-Trump fake news. The Fox News relationship with perceived accuracy was moderated by party and education such that Fox News reliance was a stronger predictor for Democrats and the more highly educated. Reliance on CNN online and elite newspaper sites was negatively related with the perceived accuracy of pro-Trump fake news. Implications for motivated reasoning theory and future directions are discussed.

Multiscreening (using a device like a smartphone while watching TV) is pervasive and may have beneficial and detrimental consequences for informed citizenship. This national survey ( N = 847) examines how multiscreening during debates and TV news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign was related to political learning. Multiscreening was associated with higher levels of thinking about politics (elaboration) and greater confidence about knowledge (information efficacy) but lower actual knowledge. The positive relationship with efficacy yet negative relationship with knowledge raises the possibility that multiscreening contributes to overconfidence. Implications for cognitive resource theories are discussed.

Generating public consensus on issue priorities is one of the most important functions of news agenda setting. However, the nature of that consensus is not well understood. Agenda setting might build a public consensus focused on a limited set of priorities, but it also has potential to build a consensus that broadens the public’s issue agenda by generating shared concerns about problems beyond the bounds of personal experience. Evidence shows that from 1968–2010, broadcast news’ agenda-setting effect tended to broaden the public agenda rather than focus it. This tendency of news agenda setting to broaden the public agenda is not affected by the news agenda’s breadth or by which issues dominate the news, although issue-level agenda setting effects may, under some circumstances, focus the public agenda. If broadcast news does not focus the public agenda, it is unlikely a focused agenda will be generated by a more fragmented media ecology.